


if you make me fight an actual dragon i swear i'm leaving

by Lapsed Pacifist (Tozette)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: I'll add tags as I go I guess, Modern Character in Thedas, Swearing, Trashy Self Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 57,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Lapsed%20Pacifist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light here hurt my eyes, strange murky green dimness that could not possibly account for its terrible glare. The air felt thick and soupy and sound was horribly distorted, like its density changed at random. I blinked, slowly, but I almost immediately had a headache anyway.</p><p>None of the angles looked quite right, and the rocky ground formed ugly spikes and cracks. There was no really obvious horizon, which seemed impossible, because there was a distinct sky and ground, but... </p><p>Light flickered fitfully, pale green and too bright, from somewhere high up.</p><p>A noise. A voice. Indecipherable. Urgent. I turned. </p><p>I... squinted. There was a glowing woman, pale and rather less sickly than the green light, perched at the top of a summit. I couldn’t make out much more than the edges of her form. Her head was a triangle. </p><p>...Why was that woman’s head a triangle?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lapsed Pacifist (Tozette)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/gifts).



> I have no excuse for this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero has an unsettling dream.

"Fuck. Fucking shitty fuckmothering..."

I stopped swearing, or perhaps just ran out of ways to make 'fuck' into an adjective, and got to my feet.

Then I started again, because I had no idea at all where I was.

The light here hurt my eyes, strange murky green dimness that could not possibly account for its terrible glare. The air felt thick and soupy and sound was horribly distorted, like its density changed at random. I blinked, slowly, but I almost immediately had a headache anyway.

None of the angles looked quite right, and the rocky ground formed ugly spikes and cracks. There was no really obvious horizon, which seemed impossible, because there was a distinct sky and ground, but...

Light flickered fitfully, pale green and too bright, from somewhere high up.

A noise. A voice. Indecipherable. Urgent.

I turned.

I... squinted. There was a glowing woman, pale and rather less sickly than the green light, perched at the top of a summit. I couldn't make out much more than the edges of her form. Her head was a triangle.

...Why was that woman's head a triangle?

Her voice was suddenly much more urgent. Behind me, something ...clicked.

I glanced back and I kind of wished I hadn't, because the only things behind me were spiders. Huge ones. Their pale hairy legs made those soft clicks over the hard ground and their eyes glared out of the dimness.

I backed away, but not fast enough. I didn't want to turn my back on them enough to run but-

Another cry.

I looked toward Triangle Head Woman, and saw her hand outstretched. She was high up, even if she was closer to that weird light, and - any port in a storm, basically. I'd take my chances with her over the spiders.

I ran for her.

Behind me, the spiders marched in unison, a hideous clicking clattering army of pale carapaces.

She was at the summit of one of the spiky outcroppings, and I scrambled up it. There was no time to look down, and if I had I knew what I'd see - spiders. Spiders and distance and a long way to fall. The rock bit into my hands and I yelped but didn't slow.

The light was brighter here, and Triangle Head's face was more distinct. She was... old. Older than I'd thought. Older than the shape of her suggested.

I stumbled and she reached for my hand.

Our hands met.

Her grip was stronger than I'd thought, and her glowing fingers snapped over my hand like a vise. She shoved me toward the light, that pale and fitfully flickering thing, and - my consciousness splintered. There was pressure, shock, the sudden onset of hideous gravity.

Green and white. Burning. Something was burning.

Clicking spiders.

The shriek of tearing metal. The tear of rending stone.

A long drop.

And... nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero freaks out a lot.

I came to slumped in a seated position with my hands tied before me. Something was wrong. With me, I mean, not with the whole tied up thing - that part was manifestly wrong and remained something I could pinpoint.

But my head was heavy, and everything seemed... subtly out of proportion. Weirdly small? Or... the wrong distance away?

Was I drunk? Drugged? Sick?

I blinked blearily, and a man in armour looked at me, snapped to alert and raced out of the room.

There were a couple of others, all standing looking at me, with mixed expressions of wariness and uncertainty.

A throb of pain spread from my left hand, strong enough that I had no idea what might possibly have caused it. It wasn't bone-deep, not the way a break was, but nor was it the stay-still-and-ignore-it pain of a deep cut. This was... flesh alight, nerves crying out, radiating. Warm pain, but not a burn.

I looked down.

There was a green light, bright like something out of a scifi film, glowing from beneath the skin of my left hand. My mind immediately went spinning away to radioactive waste or some kind of glowing mechanical insert against my will, and it took me a few moments to realise that it wasn't even my goddamn hand.

My hands? They were big for my size, but shaky, with meticulously clean nails and a great many scars - there's more than twenty on my left hand alone, a product of anxious scratching and gnawing, among my other vices.

These hands were not my hands. They were... big, huge. Seriously huge. They had long fingers with thick awkward knuckles and dark and pointed nails like claws. The complexion was all wrong. The 'me' I knew had olive skin of uncertain provenance and a very ugly yellow tinge. This skin was kind of... grey. Grey and purplish around the edges.

One of these strange hands was burning green under the skin.

I...

I looked around at the soldiers watching me.

They were all smaller than I was. Even the big ones. I looked down at my legs, folded beneath me on the floor. My thighs were huge, heavy with ropes of muscle that I'd never personally have the patience to build. They were as thick around as some of these soldiers' waists.

Gingerly, I dug one dark claw into my leg.

Ow.

It was... mine. Definitely.

Shit.

I tilted my head and felt that strange weightiness again. Somebody had tied me up, so- had they put something on my head, too? I shifted my head back and forth, but nothing moved or clattered. It was just... heavier?

Another pulse. "Motherfucker," I said succinctly, hunching over my sparking hand. "That hurts."

One of the soldiers shifted uneasily at my voice, but none of them really responded.

Then the door of this dim prison slammed open: silhouettes. Footsteps. Somebody walked with a hard, purposeful stride.

I blinked.

A woman, with dark short hair and a wicked scar on her cheek, strode into the room. The firelight glinted upon her dark-enamelled cuirass. She was both terrifying and strangely beautiful, in a harsh and austere way. For a second my eyes drifted to her extremely tight leather pants.

Another followed in her wake, quiet and soft-footed, like an afterthought. A redhead, with the smoothest peaches-and-cream complexion - she looked like she'd been extracted from a heavily doctored advertisement for skin care, but the shadows cast by her cowl covered whatever expression was in her eyes.

The woman in the cuirass stalked around me, feet clanking on the stone floor. "Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now," she said.

Well. That was... less friendly than I'd hoped.

I mean, I don't know what I expected, waking up in somebody's creepy dungeon with my hands tied together. But even so, this seemed like an unusual level of hostility.

But she was still talking, voice ringing with rage and accusation as she circled behind me. "The conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead!"

She leaned close enough for me to feel her breath on my neck. "Except for you."

Her hand snatched my glowing one. "Explain this."

There was something so terrible and final in that voice. It was ominous. It was dangerous.

It was  _familiar_.

This whole setting was familiar.

It didn't feel like a terrible dream. None of it had, not even the absolutely bizarre bits with Triangle Head and the spiders. And of course, now that I'd seen this, been yelled at by  _Cassandra fucking Pentaghast_ , I knew what that had been too. A spirit, or perhaps the Divine... and the Nightmare.

Maybe  _this_  was a nightmare? Or an unsettling dream at least. But it was so clear, so present, and it  _felt_  real.

"Well?" Cassandra hissed.

She wasn't giving me time to think. She shouldn't even exist! I shook my head, bewildered. "I don't know." Unhelpful, but so, so accurate.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Cassandra bellowed. Her face contorted. Her hand went to her belt. I flinched. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I was going to be murdered by  _Cassandra fucking Pentaghast_ and there wasn't anything I could do about it!

I cringed.

"We need him!" The redhead - oh my god,  _Leliana_  - interrupted, hooking an arm around Cassandra's armoured chest.

With a huff, Cassandra jammed her sword back in its sheath -  _thank you god -_  and although her expression didn't become any friendlier, she didn't seem likely to kill me right this second.

Leliana turned toward me. "What do you remember?" she asked instead. Her voice was soft and level, but I knew that of the two of them... well, Cassandra's violence ran hot and close to the surface, but Leliana...

Leliana would plan it in careful detail. She'd have a convenient disposal ready for the body before it was cold on the ground. No traces. Her expression was indifferent, pleasant.

I swallowed.

"I don't understand. I don't know what I was doing before... but there was... green, murky light. Spiders- or... no, huge spiders, I've never seen spiders that big... I was running from them. And then - a woman?"

"A woman?" Leliana prompted, leaning closer.

I rubbed my forehead with my bound hands. "She reached out to me."

Leliana shared a significant glance with Cassandra, who sighed. They conferred for a short, whispering moment, and then Leliana left just as quietly as she'd arrived.

"Okay," I said cautiously as the door swung shut after her, "but what did actually happen?"

I thought I might know. But, god, how much did I want to be wrong. Please let this be some kind of hideously accurate cosplay convention, okay?

Yeah, it totally wasn't.

My hands were shaking. 'My' hands weren't even my hands. But, oh, I knew whose hands they were.

I'd made a qunari character in this game. The latest one. A guy, so I could finally get around to the Dorian romance route, and - shit, I'd picked his horns on the basis of whether or not they'd be  _good handles_. Great. Real clever.

Suffice to say that I plainly had  _not_  been taking character creation as seriously as I should have.

Cassandra came to me. She leaned low to help me hoist myself to my feet, which was actually harder than you'd think with my hands tied.

"It will be easier to show you."

It was. Because some things are not easily explained in words, and a giant hole in the sky is among them. I could have lived a long time without learning this.

Daylight was too bright when she escorted me outside, and I flinched and looked away for a few long seconds. When I looked back to the sky, I...

There was very little that could have prepared me for seeing the Breach, huge and yawning and green, in the sky above Haven. It was an apocalyptic horror, like staring into the mouth of hell.

"Holy shit," I breathed.

"We call it the Breach," Cassandra said.

It was a hole in the Veil, basically.

It meant something bad, but it looked beautiful in its own terrifying way. It changed constantly, shifting and moving, sometimes in a way that seemed much more mechanical than organic. It was... compelling.

But it was still a hole boiling high in the sky, and if I remembered right there'd be, like, actual demons falling from it. And Fade spirits who didn't want to be demons but who became corrupted immediately upon entry to this world. I knew from playing through the game that Coryphius was crazy but for the first time it occurred to me that Coryphius wasn't just insane, he was  _stupid_.

"What kind of idiot would want to do that?" I muttered to myself, staring up.

"It seems to be an unintentional effect of the explosion that destroyed the Conclave," said Cassandra, in what was not nearly as neutral a voice as she probably thought.

I remembered belatedly that Cassandra actually thought I'd been responsible for that. She hadn't changed her mind yet. Might not ever, actually, depending on my luck.

She turned back toward me, her back to the Breach. "Unless we act, it will grow until it swallows the world. Your mark may be the key to stopping this, but there isn't much time."

The Breach took that moment to pulse, greenish light crackling like lightning along its edges.

My hand - my arm, my whole damn left side - gave an answering pulse of pain. "Each time it expands," she added, without much sympathy, "your mark grows. It is killing you. This may be our only chance." A pause. "And yours."

Her voice was ominous on that last bit, but her face was guileless if... stern. I swallowed. I knew how this was meant to go, but...

She was asking for my help.

I wanted to say no. My god, I wanted to say no. I looked at the glowing mark on my hand and then back to Cassandra's face. She waited patiently for a response, and I wasn't even sure if I could give one.

The mark was supposed to go to somebody  _competent._ Somebody who could, actually, save people. Make decisions. Not... fuck everything up, basically?

That wasn't me, and there was absolutely no guarantee that anything going forward from now would play out like in the video game. I could get a whole lot of people killed. Most importantly, I could get  _myself_  killed.

Except the mark was killing me already, wasn't it? That was what those pulses meant, what the instability and the pain were telling me.

I looked up at the sky.

The logical choice was before me, but I still wanted to say no. My heart was already racing, my eyes were burning and I felt like I was going to vomit up everything I'd ever eaten.

I had to force the words out, because it was the only choice that made sense. My hands were tied (yes, literally, but also metaphorically).

"Okay," I said. "I don't think I have much choice." A pause, and then, slightly hysterically, I added: "Hole in the sky and all that."

She didn't look amused.

Cassandra led me through a crowd of tents and scowling men and women. She told me quietly about how they had all pretty much already decided I was guilty. To them, it looked a lot like I'd ...killed the pope, basically.

Their anger was stiff, obvious and pretty damn scary. I got the impression that Cassandra was the only reason they hadn't yet mobbed me.

Firmly, and with perfect conviction, she added: "There will be a trial. I can promise no more."

Then she pulled a knife on me, which made me flinch and step back. She shot me an annoyed look from under her eyelashes and - cut my hands free. Oh. Right.

"We must test your mark on something smaller first," she said coolly. "Come."

I did. It wasn't like I had much choice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra's not really sure how our hero survived to adulthood. Our hero freaks out some more. Italics happen. And Varric's chest hair _is_ pretty great.

My hand burst with pain and with ugly green light. I clenched it and dug my long dark nails in, but nothing helped. Nothing helped, and my skin hurt and it felt like my veins were coming undone. My vision swam and I fell.

Cassandra went down on one knee beside me and helped me up and out of the snow. Her hands were strong and her voice was steady. "We must hurry."

So hurry we did. The path was uneven but the incline was gentle, and there was some kind of outpost up ahead. A bridge, I realised, squinting. It made sense to surround it with scouts and soldiers to the best of the force's ability - it was a clear choke point for anybody trying to get down to the village.

They threw the big wooden doors open for us, hinges protesting in the cold, and we ran through. There were crates and supplies on the bridge, and one dilapidated wagon. Over the ice of the frozen water, there was absolutely nothing to break the wind coming off the mountains, and it was quite suddenly absolutely freezing.

I faltered for a second at the bite of the wind. Holy balls, it was awful.

There was a crack and the shriek of tortured metal, the sound of tearing stone. The bridge bucked beneath my feet and I had half a second to meet Cassandra's startled eyes. I let out a short, sharp scream.

We fell. Rocks came down around us, but not, thank god, upon us. The ice beneath the bridge held, too. It must have been very thick.

There was another sound, this one an ugly scrape of something against the ice. I hesitated before I saw the source of the sound: demons, encroaching with single-minded focus. Their claws dragged, scraping mindlessly against the ice.

"Stay behind me!" Cassandra cried, and without further hesitation she was racing forward to meet them.

And, you know what? That sounded like a fucking  _grand_ idea. I stayed behind Cassandra.

There were three demons, though: ugly shades with twisted forms and shifting, half-corporeal features. Cassandra engaged two of them, but one lunged for me before she had its attention - and then she was already fending off the first two, and had no time to babysit.

The demon had those terrible sharp teeth and it was bearing down upon me like a nightmare. I - well, I shoved my hands up in front of my face. It bore me to the ground and I kicked out at it - it jerked, subsided - I dug my hands into its strange half-real flesh. Panic. My green hand crackled and I yelped, pain and fear and disgust all in one small noise.

Then the shade  _bit_  me.

What the  _actual_  fuck?

I was pretty sure they didn't bite in the game, just flailed their huge clawed hands and made a mess and splatter blood over everything, but - oh, gross, was it going to  _eat_  me, then? Those were definitely the teeth of a carnivore.

Shit. Shit shit- "Shit!"

I scrambled.

There was a bit of wood right there, right where we'd fallen, and -

I lunged for it, slipping on the ice, and it was with more luck than skill that I whirled and smacked the demon over its ugly head. I needed space from that hideous thing, dear god, I needed space! It shrieked, some unholy noise, and I jammed the end of the staff into its stomach - or, what passed for its stomach? - and used the length of it to get clear of its reach.

It swarmed forward. I yelled with the effort, swinging wildly, and the staff connected with its skull.

It stumbled.

Cassandra's sword went right through it. Her forward thrust was effortless.

I stared at the disintegrating demon - it  _actually_  did that, that was not just a dumb game mechanic: it faded in a strange way, lost its form to steam and sparkles and something that smelled like the air before a storm - and panted.

The air was cold, but I was hot, sweating. I looked from the demon to the staff to Cassandra's face.

Suddenly her sword was aimed at me.

"DROP YOUR WEAPON NOW," she demanded in a huge and terrible voice, as though by making her voice big enough she could guarantee compliance.

What was I going to do, pick a fight with her?

I dropped the staff.

She stared at me, like she had not expected that to be even slightly effective.

I have no idea why because she was fucking terrifying. Seriously.

"Wait. I can't..." She sighed. "You don't need a staff, but you should have one. I can't protect you." It seemed to cost her something to say that, and her expression was grim. "I should remember you agreed to come willingly."

"Uh," I said. "I get that, but I'd really like it if you tried."

Her lips thinned, but she didn't actually respond - she just handed off some potions to me. I really hoped I wouldn't need them.

I would probably need them.

"Are, er, do you have soldiers?" I asked hesitantly. I would have liked soldiers. You know, to stand behind. Cower behind, even. ...I was probably a bit big for cowering now. Pity.

She made an affirmative noise. "They're at the forward camp, or fighting," her gaze darted back to me. "We are on our own for now." Her expression added the ' _Maker_   _help us_ ' that her voice did not.

As we jogged on and my feet continued to slip in the unfamiliar snow, internally I thought about the potions she'd offered - and subsequently about hit points, and how being beaten just meant brief unconsciousness in the game, and skill points and experience.

But none of that  _happened_. I didn't have hit points or any weird constitution bonuses. I had arms and legs (and horns) and I was just as scared of getting them lopped off here as I would have been in my own world.

I looked at Cassandra quietly and I sincerely hoped she was willing to stand between me and anything with lots of teeth.

As it turned out, Cassandra was totally willing, yes. Able? Not so much.

The little green things had no literal teeth, but they fired weird shit. If I remembered right, they packed a punch but were fragile - I was the opposite, wasn't I? Big shoulders and horns and all. I hurled myself up the incline at Cassandra's behest and beat it to death with my stick.

This was wild and fucked up, but not rocket science. I'd fight. Cassandra would help. We'd... shit, we'd make it to the camp and then fight a fucking pride demon.

If I died here, before the Breach was sealed? I was pretty sure that the whole bloody world was doomed.

Also, very importantly:  _I'd be dead_.

"We have to hurry," Cassandra reminded me.

On we went.

More demons. I squinted. "Are they  _falling from the Breach_?" I hissed.

Cassandra made a noise I interpreted as assent, and then before I had any time to gather my wits she charged forward ahead of me. There was a horrible, percussive  _thump_  when her shield smacked into a demon, and another turned toward her - more concerned with her than me, because apparently even really stupid demons knew who the real threat was.

Blessed be small favours, but even Cassandra probably couldn't take on four at once. I followed her, singled one out, and hurled all my weight into the swing of my staff.

It made a loud, satisfying  _crack_  and the demon dropped like a rock.

...Huh.

Then another one nearly took my head off with one clawed hand.

It turns out you don't have a lot of time to woolgather when you're surrounded by murderous demons. Who'd have thought, right?

"Shit!" I took the blow on the shoulder and staggered with its force. Then - the steely  _shink_  of Cassandra's sword. The demon disintegrated into wispy smoke.

"I don't want to alarm you," I told her from my vantage sitting on my arse in the snow, "but you're amazing."

She eyed me.

"Traditionally," she said, looking very uncomfortable, "a mage stays at the back and fights from a distance." She looked pointedly at my staff. "That is... not truly a bludgeoning weapon."

I rubbed my hea- oh shit, I rubbed my horns. Because I had horns.

_Sure._

"I... don't know how?"

The grim line of her mouth became somehow grimmer. "You are... not a combat mage, then? A healer? A..." she seemed a bit lost.

"Um," I said slowly. "No, I'm just. Er. Terrible at it."

Her eyebrows rose.

She sheathed her sword. Then, after a moment's staring - angry staring, but I thought perhaps angry at circumstance, not at... well, not ONLY at me - she strode to one of the bodies laying about that I'd been trying to ignore.

When she returned she was carrying a stout iron cudgel. She held it out.

It looked much heavier than the staff, and much of that weight was in its brutal-looking head. Looking at it, I wasn't even sure if I could lift it, but I took it and...

... and I was vashoth, right: huge and genetically gifted with being a giant wall of muscle. I lifted it.  _Easily_.

The weight of it was pleasant in its way, heavy and comforting. I swished it gently through the air. Aw, yeah.

She looked at me, opened her mouth, and then closed it again. After a second she said shortly, "Try not to die before we arrive at the rift."

Another time, I'd have had a million bitchy rejoinders to that. Right now? I nodded. I was still breathing hard, but it wasn't exertion any more - it was fright, nerves, anxiety. I felt better with the cudgel in my hand, but...

Yeah, this was not a good place to be in for me.

She nodded back. We moved. As we struggled up the next snowy, slippery incline, she nodded to the southwest. "You can hear the fighting," she pointed out.

I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. God knew I didn't want to go near the fighting, but listening to it - those sounds meant that at least Cassandra's people were still actually fighting, didn't it? Alive. Struggling.

"Who is it?" I asked blankly. If I'd been thinking clearly I'd have already known, but I was basically running in safe mode. I wasn't exactly used to having monsters try to eat me.

"We must help them," she said, which was hardly an answer.

I felt like an idiot when we topped the rise and I realised that among the fighting were two very familiar companions.

Varric looked nearly exactly as I'd expected - a broad-shouldered, stocky man with sturdy muscles who stood chest-high to everybody else. His shirt was open in the chilly air and his chest hair was, in fact, pretty damn abundant. I wasn't sure about "luxurious" or "manly" but there sure was a lot of it.

Solas, on the other hand... well, he looked like Solas, certainly. Hobo apostate eggheaded elf: check. But while I found him oddly slight and awkward in the game, he moved with uncommon grace and purpose in real life. As we approached I saw him dodge sideways, light on his toes, and slam the base of his staff into the ground - and ice shot up the form of the demon before him, crackling and crystalising as I watched.

There were demons everywhere, spewing forth from a rift, and Cassandra charged without the faintest hint of any trepidation. She slammed into the iced-over demon with her shield, shattering it and sending pieces of icy shade scattering across the ground, and then continued on with barely a pause, roaring a challenge that seemed to hang in the frozen air.

Her armoured bulk smacked into a shade across the other side of the melee, and she mowed it down effortlessly before moving onto the next.

Solas, too, had already moved on.

I hesitated for a second, and then cautiously waded in and, while it was distracted with trying to eviscerate Varric, I coshed a demon over its head.

At the very least, my new club was good for something: its heavy iron top collided with the thing's head with possibly the grossest sound I'd ever heard. It was a kind of squelch-crackle, and a bit of flying black - something? goo? ectoplasm? fade-magic-demon-blood?  _Something_  - splattered on my cheek.

That was kind of gross, but I didn't really have time to get upset about it. Several of the other demons were pretty sure I was a threat now, and one of them broke away from trying to crowd Cassandra to swipe at me.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. It was very different to smacking one from behind - this one was paying attention, and it dodged out of the way of my first swing. Only the part where I nearly fell arse over heels in the snow saved me from losing a big chunk of my guts - instead I felt a burning line down my arm and recovered, just barely, to swing wildly again with the club.

It made another gross liquidy-crunching noise when it connected with part of the shade's shadowy torso, and there was a moment's hesitation or pain before it tried to get at my insides again.

I leaned heaved on the cudgel and caved its head in.

The rush of demons had slowed enough that we'd gotten rid of all but one, and Cassandra was taking care of that one - and by "taking care of" I mean that she was methodically taking it apart without even breaking a sweat.

Varric let Bianca wind down, shifted his weight to account for no longer having to fight her recoil, and I glanced back to where Solas had been because-

"Shit!"

Solas came out of  _nowhere,_ silent on his feet and  _right next to me_ , and he snapped his fingers around my wrist. Then turned and thrust my hand toward the rift.

It whined, higher and higher, like malfunctioning electronics, a hideous counterpoint to the hiss of hot blood and dissolving demon in the snow, and -

I clenched my eyes shut as a shock went through me. Green light burst against my eyelids.

"What the fuck," I muttered, clutching my hand to my chest and scowling at Solas. His pale, pointed face was utterly unmoved, maybe a little bemused.

"Okay. That - " I looked at where the rift once was, and it was nothing now but clear skies. No demons. Even the air was calm, although it had begun to snow again. No fighting, no screaming.

I breathed. "That's - we did that?"

Of course we did that, but I still turned uncertainly to Solas. I didn't feel like I'd done anything at all - just received a kind of unpleasant shock. The mark just worked on its own, then? Like... completely?

"I did nothing," he said, oddly pointedly, and - of course, I thought. Deflect responsibility. Weird hobo elf. Definitely not the motherfucking Dread Wolf. Right. I stared at him, and a hundred things came crashing down upon me.

_Shit._

"The credit is yours," he said.

 _Credit_. Right.

At least he didn't know me well enough to read my facial expression. For all he knew, 'oh shit' may have been my default expression. We were all stressed, all pressed hard. Any weird behaviour in somebody unfamiliar would be interpreted as a product of stress.

That was... good.

I blinked once, slowly.

He explained his theory about the mark and its magic to Cassandra and I, and she looked intent and determined.

I, on the other hand, couldn't help but wonder - snidely, but internally, how Solas managed to come to such an accurate 'theoretical' conclusion. Cassandra and Leliana must have been willing to overlook a lot of strangely convenient coincidences for the sake of his help in such a difficult time, because it wasn't like they were stupid.

Or at least not as stupid as Solas evidently seemed to think.

I bit my bottom lip.

"It appears you hold the key to our salvation." He sounded pleased on some level, crinkling eyes, curved lip. There was something obscene about hearing that from  _him_. Christ on a pogo stick, he was an asshole.

I didn't answer that. There was no good answer.

"Good to know!" came a cheerful voice, louder than Solas's quiet murmur. "And here I thought we'd be ass deep in demons forever." Varric. He was short. Really short. Probably more short than he actually was, if you take my meaning, since I was at least two feet taller than I remembered being.  _Not_  counting the horns.

"Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller and occasionally unwelcome tagalong." He introduced himself with a crooked smile and an easy manner.

Cassandra made a disgusted noise.

"Right," I said, swallowing. "Uh, good to meet you. What now?"

...Annnnd then Varric and Cassandra immediately began to bicker about Varric's presence - which,  _why_ , Cassandra?  _Why_? I had no objection to taking an entire goddamn army with me! The more people raining fiery death upon the demons, the better, in my view.

Quietly, Solas stepped up. "If there are to be introductions..."

I nodded. "Solas, right." (Pride. _Dread Wolf_. Fuck.  _Why?_ ) I licked my teeth. "Good to meet you," I said mechanically, clenching my marked fist.

He said something else, but I wasn't actually listening much. I was just looking at him. He really did have huge pointed ears. I know that's a dumb thing to say, especially coming from somebody with enormous horns, but it was still completely bizarre to me.

I did not tell him his head looked like an egg. It was kind of a near thing, though. Instead, I blurted, "Are your feet not freezing?"

He blinked. Then he looked down at his bare feet and eyed my heavy boots like I was the irrational one. He wriggled his toes in the snow like he'd never really considered whether or not it was cold. They were still pale and pinkish, and didn't look the least bit like he'd be developing awful chilblains anytime soon.

Even if his toes were cold, they obviously weren't going to fall off or anything. I wondered if maybe elves had some weird biological adaptation? They were such  _little_  things, too. How did they keep their core temperature up and promote healthy circulation at the same time in this sort of weather?

"No," he said. His voice wasn't quite hard, but it  _was_  pretty flat.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry. Was that rude?"

"...I did not think you intended for it to be so," he said, in a tone that suggested he had, in fact, thought it was pretty rude. Then he turned away.

"Sorry?" I said again, wincing. He ignored me.

Varric seemed to have won while I was woolgathering and/or making an ass of myself, and Solas stepped in to cut through any residual bickering. "Your prisoner is a mage, but I find it difficult to believe that any mage might wield this kind of power," he announced.

"Understood," Cassandra turned on her heel and took off. "We must reach the forward camp."Solas followed her at a swift walk, keeping up despite her height advantage.

"Well," said Varric. His voice was somewhere between sarcastic and genuine, a little bitter, a little grimly pleased. "Bianca's excited," he informed me with a hard smile, and patted his crossbow.

I watched him follow Cassandra and Solas.

Then I raised my eyes to the sky. The breach.

Thedas. Dwarf. Dread Wolf. Seeker. Breach.

I rubbed my hand. God, I was so fucked. I was so very,  _very_  fucked. How was it even possible to be as seriously, deeply fucked as I was?

"This way," Cassandra called impatiently.

"Right," I said, and broke into a jog. Emergencies first,  _then_  freaking the fuck out.

And, oh, there  _would_ be time set aside later for freaking the fuck out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero is cranky, swears a lot, and fights a pride demon.

"So," said Varric thoughtfully, somehow finding the breath to keep up with Cassandra and talk at the same time, despite his shorter legs, " _Are_  you innocent?"

"I don't remember." I did, in fact,  _know_  what had happened, intellectually. I mean, now that I understood where I was, it was pretty obvious what had happened. The... setting itself was something I was dealing with on an ad hoc basis and avoiding all thoughts of at other times, because there was a hole in the sky and demons screaming and, like,  _no_. Just no. Now was not the time to have any kind of break down, existential, moral, psychological or otherwise.

Freaking out was on hold until I was sure I wasn't going to die. Until then, my brain was booting in safe mode and honestly it was actually pretty damn helpful.

At any rate, I  _didn't_  remember, not really. And the Inquisitor wasn't meant to know, and... I was the Inquisitor, wasn't I? Or at least the Herald. Or... something. It would be convenient to... maybe I could drop hints through confused 'memories' to Leliana at a later point, but I had no interest in being hauled aside and plied with a million questions I couldn't answer.

Or, indeed, questions I might be  _forced_  to answer. I was so not ready to see what Solas might do with the knowledge of another world. One that had only had humans to fuck it up so far.

If he didn't already know.

God, he didn't, did he?

Our world did  _not_  need his particular brand of trying really hard to help.

I swallowed, wondering what he'd found when he studied me while I slept. Nothing, hopefully. Hopefully.

"That'll get you every time," Varric drawled, derailing my very loud, but equally internal panic. "Should have spun a story."

"That's what  _you_  would have done," Cassandra said darkly.

"It's more believable. Aannnnd less prone to result in premature execution," he added really pointedly.

 _Tell me about it,_  I thought, remembering the contortion of Cassandra's face in the prison, her rage and her quick hands and snarling mouth.

But Cassandra was...

Of all of them, she was faithful. Reliable. Steady. Also, she'd already jumped between me and a goddamn demon. More than once. "She has no reason to believe me," I forced myself to point out. My voice came out flat, but I  _said_  it - it seemed like something that needed to be acknowledged.

"I wouldn't remind her of that, if I were you," suggested Varric.

He... he had a point.

As much as I had no interest in discussing how innocent or guilty they might have found me, I had even less interest in fighting off another wave of demons and closing another rift. Unfortunately, that was the order of the day.

Demons made shrill noises, high and aggrieved even over the sound of the mountains' icy winds. They left my ears ringing and my bones aching.

I hesitated when I saw the first shade rise from the ground, misshapen, hunched and ugly. Nobody else did: Varric's bolt took it straight through the throat. It would have been a kill-shot on a person, but demons had turned out to be sturdy in very different ways. Cassandra impacted the thing with a violent thump. She bore it to the snow, screaming a challenge as she did.

It was enough to stun it, but there were more behind it.

I hefted the cudgel.

At least when this thing hit a demon's head, it fucking stayed down. I reached out to close the rift and saw Solas eyeballing one of the demons I'd taken out. There was little expression on his face, but he didn't seem thrilled.

Whatever. I was definitely leaving the magic shit to him - at least until somebody could teach me something about it. Preferably  _not_ Solas, because he was scary as balls and kind of an enormous jerk and he'd definitely figure out  _something_ wasn't right.

And also because I'd  _already_ managed to offend him.

I rubbed my hands through my hair. Shit. My horns. I had horns. Okay, yes. Forgot about that. Riiight. I was a qunari. That was why everybody looked like... dwarf-height.

(Except the fucking dwarves. They were way smaller than dwarf-height, from my perspective.)

We got to the forward camp and found Leliana was already arguing with Chancellor Roderick. "I?" she was saying. "I have caused trouble?"

He turned to respond, but she caught sight of us and hastened to make introductions - more, I thought, as a way to change the subject (or at least to change the object of his ire) than because she really thought anybody needed introducing.

"I know who he is," he said darkly, glowering at me.

Then he ordered Cassandra to take me to Val Royeaux for execution.

As much as I knew Cassandra and Leliana were going to get their way, I still felt a jolt at those words. The possibility was somehow more upsetting than fighting demons with these lunatics.

"You?  _Order me_?" Cassandra spat incredulously.

The ensuing argument appeared, as far as I could tell, to be that Roderick thought the rifts were completely irrelevant - that the reasonable course of action was to ignore them and go elect a new po- I mean, Divine.

Cassandra didn't seem terribly impressed with his reasoning.

She didn't make much of an impact upon him, and his next response was to cry dramatically: "Abandon this now, before more lives are lost!"

I eyed him. I was tired, anxious, and exhausted from an exciting day of freaking out and beating demons' brains in, and this dickhead wanted me to go meekly to be hanged. "Sorry," I interrupted, in a tone that was way more growl than apology, "did you just say you think leaving this now will  _prevent_  loss of life?" I asked incredulously. "You think that-" I pointed up, "- is just gonna take care of itself? It's vomiting demons."

A noise of pure frustration came from him as he turned a furious face upon me. He clenched his fists. "The sheer impudence of the Divine's murderer -"

" _It's vomiting demons_. Why are you more concerned with one dead woman than the many people currently dying because the  _sky is vomiting demons_?"

Cassandra looked sharply at me. Oops. Sue me, I'm not religious, okay? And  _still_. Like, yeah, she was the pope, but she was also  _one fucking person_.

Roderick looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "The  _prisoner_ ," he began, with a hefty emphasis on my 'title'.

"Chancellor," interrupted Leliana, her voice melodic but  _hard._

The argument continued. It... went on for a while.

I glanced sideways at Varric.

He polished Bianca's sights on his coat, glanced up at my attention, and then shrugged as if to say: well, what did you expect?

Finally, Cassandra turned to me. "How do you think we should proceed?"

I raised my eyebrows. I was the prisoner... but I was also the person with the magic glowing green hand. I wondered if we could just cut it off and give it to Cassandra or Leliana. Might be worth losing the hand, to be honest, and god knew they'd do a better job.

"Um," I said slowly. "I'm all for addressing that as quickly as we can," I said, looking at the sky. "The mountain path would be safer, yeah, but safety is kind of relative once it starts raining demons." Other people's safety, at least.  _I_  was pretty much fucked either way - for me, the only way out was through, and that way had a  _lot_  of demons.

Leliana's eyebrows shifted expressively, but she didn't disagree. Cassandra just nodded.

"On your head be the consequences, Seeker," Roderick said, soft but spiteful.

"Yes," I muttered once we were out of earshot. "Now is an excellent time for bitter whingeing."

"Ignore him," said Cassandra loftily. There was no sign that she was even the slightest bit worried about the consequences - she was committed to this path, and she would see it through.

"I'm just saying, how irrational do you have to be to choose  _now_  to be unhelpful? There's only a giant fucking hole in the sky spewing up demons."

"He is scared," said Solas.

"We're  _all_  scared. And yet here we are, racing face-first into a bunch of demons to close a hole in the sky. You're all lucky I haven't  _shit_  myself yet. But he can't even-"

My annoyed outburst was interrupted by the wail of another shade. "Brilliant," I seethed, cynical and sarcastic, and hefted my bludgeon.

The fight was faster than several others before it: I swung, angry and tired and sick of everything, and did not take a great deal of care for my personal safety. That seemed to work out okay only because Solas was throwing shielding spells over everybody, which was mighty helpful of him.

Not all demons were the same, of course, but after having killed several shades, you did start to get a bit used to the business: how to know when one was down for the count, at least, and when it was safe to turn your back on a body and let it dissolve.

"We've lost a lot of people getting you here," was very nearly the first thing Commander Cullen said to me. His face was pleasant and symmetrical with a mean scar on his mouth, and at first glance he seemed just as young as the soldiers running around after him - but there was a weight to his gaze that made me want to add a few years to my guess: resigned, jaded.

"Yeah," I ground my teeth, because  _how was any of this my fault?_ "That's shit, but you're going to lose a lot more if I don't get to that temple quickly."

A pause. Then: "Yes," he said, without so much as a twitch. "We've cleared the way."

"Great," I said, feeling as though it was anything but. My whole body was already aching, already exhausted. Despite this strange body, it was clear that I hadn't the stamina for this sort of work: adrenalin only took care of so much, and now my body felt like it had given all it was ready to give.

Just this one further mess, then. All I had to do was fight a pride demon and...

Yeah. I had to fight a pride demon.

Shit, shit, shit.

Well, there was hardly any backing out now. I was pretty sure Cassandra would drag me through the snow by my horns and throw me at the Breach bodily if she thought it would help.

I took a deep breath. "All right."

Then we moved forward and approached Temple of Sacred Ashes.

"That is where you walked out of the Fade," Cassandra said quietly. "Our soldiers found you."

It was a wreck.

Bodies were frozen in ash, each face twisted in a hideous rictus of agony. Their skin was gone, their muscle bare. Some were still smouldering.

Everything smelled of hot metal and cooking meat and burned hair. And damp, where the burning had reduced the snow to puddles. It wasn't a good smell.

"They say they saw a woman in the rift behind you, but nobody knows who she was."

The temptation to say 'Andraste,' as sarcastically as possible was overwhelming, but I didn't give in. It would cause no end of trouble, and no doubt it would piss Cassandra off something terrible right now.

Cassandra may have only come up to my chest but she was terrifying.

Amazing, yes. But terrifying.

Leliana arrived right on our heels with a group of scouts. They, like her, were mostly archers and agility fighters, but it was still comforting to have them there.

The temple was rubble, but it might once have been beautiful. A great deal of work had evidently gone into it at some point... but now that was ruined. The Breach was a long, long way up.

Just as I was thinking it, Varric said it.

 _Yeah, buddy,_  I thought.  _It sure is._

But below it was a rift, just like any other. A little bigger, perhaps. It was, like all the others, strangely pretty: deep shades of green, shifting and twisting in the air. It looked like some kind of mineral, really, the spikes strangely geometric. A thought flitted by: geometric shapes had something to do with strong chemical bonds or... maybe a specific kind? Didn't they? Was that what...

"This is your chance to end this. Are you ready?" Cassandra asked.

"Ready?"  _Are you fucking with me?_  "No. God, no. Not even a little bit." There, that was honest. Cassandra didn't look thrilled with my honesty though. I took a deep breath. "But you tell me what to do and I'll give it a shot."

She didn't look thrilled at this information, but she nodded.

So forward we went.

There was red lyrium, and terrible voices that echoed in the air. They weren't quite directionless: instead, they came to us as distorted, bouncing from the rubble and singing horribly along the lyrium.

_"Someone help me!"_

_"What's going on here?"_

"That was your voice. Most Holy called out to you... but..."

" _We have an intruder. Slay the Qunari!"_

Cassandra whirled upon me. "You were there! Who attacked? And the Divine? Is she...?" The frenzied light in her eyes banked after a moment, and she clenched her jaw. "Was this vision true?" she demanded.

I knew intellectually that it probably was, but I definitely didn't recall it happening to me. I shook my head. "I don't know."

Solas pushed past me, eyes fixed on the crackling green light.

Cassandra bared her teeth in a snarl and took a grip on my arm that was painful despite how much bigger I was. "What do you mean,  _you don't know_?"

I flinched back from her. "I mean I don't fucking know!" I snapped back.

Solas interrupted us. "These are echoes of what happened here. The fade..." he paused, looking for a word, "... _bleeds_  into this place."

He inspected the rift for a few more moments and then returned his attention to us to tell us it was closed without being sealed. There was no way in hell his extremely accurate 'guesswork' was getting past Leliana; she must have known by now that he wasn't just an apostate hobo who wandered out of the wilderness to help. But she let him. I glanced around, seeing her archers and a few scouts, but not the spymaster herself. She was around somewhere, I was sure.

Everybody looked on uneasily as Solas continued: "It can be opened, then sealed properly. Opening it, however, will attract attention from the other side."

This seemed to drag Cassandra's attention back to the problem at hand, thoughts of the Divine's death shunted aside for now. "That means demons," she warned in a voice that soared above the ambient sounds. "Stand ready!"

I stalled for a few seconds, staring up at the hole in the sky.

"You will need to use the mark," Solas reminded me -  _reminded_  me, as if I'd forgotten somehow - in a tone of voice that could have meant anything.

I scowled, but held my hand up toward the rift.

The mark on my hand connected with it and I could already feel the difference. This rift was... bigger, more established. The mark connected the rift and I in a crackling stream of green light, which hissed and spat out spikes of - energy, magic,  _something_. I cringed.

The light narrowed suddenly, and then from its centre grew a ball that coalesced into the pride demon.

It was as tall as three of me, made of hard thorny skin with sharp ridges and dips, jagged and monstrous. The light from the rift made it glow green and sickly and washed it with ugly power.

I had not realised there was still enough reserve energy in my body to produce this much adrenalin. I took one look at it and the only thing that prevented me from breaking, panicking and fleeing for my life was the fact that I was  _fucking frozen to the spot_.

Cassandra looked at it. Her face was hard. No fear. No second guessing. Just resolve. " _Now_!"

Her voice soared. Arrows fired.

With a hiss and a strange glittering shiver, Solas threw a barrier over all of us. Varric did something complicated looking with a winch.

All I had to do was to disrupt the rift so the others could hurt the demon. That was... not easy, no. But easier than fighting.

Then the pride demon roared and I very nearly pissed myself.

I'm not even kidding. I'm pretty sure I peed a little.

"This is so, so bad," I said in a voice gone high with dread, rough on the edge of absolute panic.

"Easy, big guy," murmured Varric, and - I hadn't realised he'd been listening. I hadn't realised he'd been close enough to listen. "If you faint, who's going to close the rift?"

"It's almost impossible to faint when you're experiencing an acute stress response, unless you hyperventilate," I informed him, automatically and, yeah, okay, kind of inanely.

Varric laughed at me.

I flipped him off with one huge hand. Bravado, but the teasing and stupid banter was... It was stupid but it made me feel more... grounded? Perhaps that was why people did it. Normalcy among chaos. That made some sense. Fine. I could work with that.

I'd never roll my eyes at Spiderman's cheesy lines again, seriously.

The demon took one ground-shaking step forward, leaving the rift behind it unprotected - for a certain value of "unprotected". Cassandra cried out, a huge, swelling scream that came with bared teeth and wild eyes and which attracted its attention immediately, and then she hunkered down behind her shield a split second before its huge clawed fist took a swipe at her.

I steeled myself and darted behind it. As long as I focused on this little slice of terror that was my part, it would all be okay. Surely.

Disrupting the rift was faster and weirdly easier than closing or opening it, and when I managed it I felt the force of the thing slam outward, a shockwave that sent all of us wobbling.

The demon itself staggered to one knee and I heard Cassandra cry out that it was vulnerable.

From somewhere in my peripheral vision, I saw Solas give his staff a workmanlike twist, and felt the ambient temperature drop as frost raced up the demon's legs.

I clutched my cudgel and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do to help.

Then the pride demon somehow summoned a bunch of shades straight from the Fade just to mess with us, and those? Those, I was getting pretty used to handling at this point. It felt productive to bash what passed for their faces in, even if the weird squelchy noises were kind of disturbing.

The fight seemed to stretch forever, and it passed in a haze of pain, panic and retina-searing lights displays. Every new second provided a hundred possibilities to falter and fail.

Disrupting the rift was becoming increasingly difficult, taking longer, hurting more. I hadn't even known I was doing anything the first time I'd done it, but now - now all I could hear was the whine of the magic, the thunder of my heart and the wheeze of my own goddamn breath.

"Tell me it's gonna die soon," I gasped to a nearby scout, falling back and clutching my arm to my chest. The mark was pulsing, radiating pain with every new heartbeat. I swallowed, which was much too much time between breaths, and then coughed. I leaned forward, bracing my unmarked hand on my knee, and tried to breathe.

"It is weakening," said a familiar voice, and I glanced sideways to see that it wasn't a scout at all - it was Leliana. Her voice was calm and her eyes were intent, shadowed but glinting in the changing green light.

She set her arrow, drew, released and reached for another like it was all one movement to her, as easy as breathing.

"Shade," she snapped suddenly, and I jerked up from my panting slouch just in time to see another one of those fuckers rise from the ground.

"Oh,  _fuck this shit_ ," I muttered, clutched my club two handed, and took a wild swing at its face with all the force I could muster.

There's one thing to be said for being an eight foot wall of muscle, and that's this: when you swing a club at something's skull, it doesn't get back up.

I coughed again.

Leliana had managed to shift herself behind my bulk - which, you know, wasn't that hard - and was still firing relentlessly at the pride demon. I heard her make a soft noise of pique and looked that way to see - ah. The demon had its guard up again, and seemed to be shaking the arrows off like droplets of water.

That was as much of a breather as I was getting, then. I heaved myself into a jog back toward the rift, raised my hand and braced myself for the shock of disruption. Green light burst in a rush of noise and a smell of singed hair.

Varric had apparently been waiting for exactly that, because I heard him cry out in triumph, the sound of a projectile singing through the air, and then -

\- honestly, it sort of looked like the monstrous head of that thing just sprouted fletchings. 

Leliana was right - it must have been weakening, because up until now there had been no way to get something to penetrate deeply enough to damage it. Now...

The demon staggered.

Solas snarled somewhere behind me and ice encased its whole torso, and all around were the sudden  _snap-whine-snap_  of bowstrings.

Cassandra looked white as a sheet, and she steadied herself on her feet, breathing heavily. She made no move to expend her energy on attacking and instead seemed to brace herself behind her shield.

She needn't have bothered, because one of Leliana's arrows went straight through its eye - which was a  _nice goddamn shot_ \- and its knees hit the stone floor with a tremendous noise and a tremor.

It was down.

As soon as the demon was down, the rift twisted in on itself, huge and swirling and - I squinted against its light. This wasn't the same as the others. This was... huge.

Cassandra's voice soared again, strained and weary: "Now! Seal the rift! DO IT!"

I was exhausted, but her voice compelled me all on its own. I stumbled forward and raised my hand once more.

Light exploded from it. It hit my skin like a physical force.

Green. Green everywhere.

Then nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got so sick this week, omg. Cleaning this up and posting it is like a celebration of being able to imbibe solid foods again, whoo.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horns are hard work and the Inquisition happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some gender/body dysphoria in this chapter.

I woke with my head upon a pillow. It genuinely did not feel as though any time had passed, and I blinked, disoriented, at the wooden roof of a cabin. Obviously time  _had_  passed, because I was certainly not inside the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

I sat up. The pillow came with me and sagged sadly against the side of my skull. I shook my head, but it didn't go anywhere, and -

"I didn't know you were awake, I swear!" The voice broke on something like terror, and startled me out of my thoughts.

A tiny person had arrived in the room at some point, which must have been what woke me, but -

The tiny person dropped to all fours, which was alarming at best. "I beg your forgiveness and your blessing, I am but a humble servant-"

"Whoa, whoa, shit," I raised my hands. "Dude.  _Dude_." They paused in their frightened begging and then I didn't know what to say at all, so I just blinked. Then: "I have a pillow attached to my face. Why is there a pillow attached to my face?"

The tiny person - male? female? gender non conforming? hard to tell, just looking, but I thought it was an elf - peered up at me. "Er," they said. "It's... your horn."

I blinked.

Oh. "Shit, right." I reached up, followed the curve of the long horn upon my head and gently tugged the pillow free. Feathers leaked from it, raining softly down upon my head and tumbling around me onto the bed.  _Horns_ , seriously.

"Do you think somebody's going to be really mad about that?" I asked nervously. Somebody had to own this place, right? And here I was, a total stranger, busting up their furnishings.

The servant - slave? Elf. Frightened elf - still stared at me. If possible, their eyes had gotten somehow wider.

"Look..." I said slowly, fiddling with the feathers in my lap. "Am I upsetting you?"

They shook their head rapidly. "Uh. The Lady Cassandra -" more babble. Lots of babble.

I took only a couple of things away from the rattling of the small person's voice.  _Cassandra. Chantry._  Okay.

"Sure," I said, but the elf was already out the door, moving at a breakneck speed.

The pillow was a write off. I squinted into a glass bottle, trying to tell if there was anything still stuck to my horn. Hard to say.

The rest of the cabin was an odd mix - simultaneously rustic and rich. There were uneven but sturdy stone floors, wooden walls reinforced from the inside and braziers glowing to light the place. There were furs and paintings strung up on the walls, logs next to the fireplace and a threadbare carpet on the floor.

Food littered surfaces: fruits, vegetables, jars and bottles, all preserved or drying. I supposed that made sense- pilgrims had arrived and come for the conclave, which meant that Haven wasn't really much of a community. They would have needed their own supplies.

And then they'd all died in the explosion.

And now I was in the house they'd used, chilling in their bed. Possibly using their actual dead person bed sheets.

...quaint.

Still, it wasn't like they'd been brutally murdered  _on_  the bed sheets. And they were pretty soft, all horn-related accidents aside.

I ached like hell, and I knew the air would be a lot colder if I left the bed and the cabin. For a few long moments I really did contemplate just staying in bed. If Cassandra wanted to see me so badly, well, she knew where I was.

The mark on my hand gave a soft twinge, the first I'd had since waking.

 _Ugh_. That felt ominously like the  _soft twinge of responsibility_.

"Buggery." I examined my fist and saw the mark, which to my eyes just looked like the sparkly green light of obligation. Ugh, fuck Solas anyway.

Yeah, okay.

I rolled out of bed. My awareness of my body seemed normal enough, but when I moved while naked I had to ignore my weird dangly junk as best I could. Having a penis was a little like having the horns - although I was familiar with the form, function and general existence of penises so the horns were honestly a fair bit weirder.

At least penises were common among humans. It wasn't like I had many expectations of qunari biology, you know? I could have ended up with a cloaca. Which. Yeah,  _that_  would have been weird.

It did mean that the first things I went digging for were smallclothes and pants, though. Ordinarily I'd have gone looking for a bra, but there was, like... nothing on my chest. That, in and of itself, felt a lot stranger than the whole penis thing.

I hadn't had much time to reflect on this stuff while I was running around punching demons in the face.

I felt a lot less weird when I was wearing pants. They were very close-fitting pants made of some kind of really tough animal skin, and I had a moment to wonder if my qunari butt was really tight enough for them. I was fairly sure they weren't the pants I'd been wearing when I passed out, but I couldn't find those anywhere. It seemed pretty safe to assume that any clothing made in my size was pretty much made for me.

Unfortunately, I could not find any kind of shirt. Or, really, any kind of... top-shaped clothing.

It was probably because I was _completely fucking gargantuan._

Well, whatever. I wasn't leaving without a shirt. Maybe I didn't have boobs anymore but I wasn't cool with leaving the house topless.

After a second I pulled the bed sheet off the bed, used my new sharp, dark nails to make a tear in the hemmed-up part at one end and tore it in half. I'd already made a mess of the pillows and it seemed like there was a pretty good chance the owners were dead anyway. Then, wearing my new  _stylish_  shawl, I left to find Cassandra.

There were a lot of people outside.

They... murmured at me.

There was murmuring.

"Uh," I said, and self-consciously I adjusted my shawl. "Hi?"

The soldier nearest me banged one armoured fist upon his chest plate, which I guess was like some kind of salute. I jumped at the noise.

"Herald," he said sharply.

I winced. And then I had no idea what to say to him so I totally just shifted uncomfortably on my toes and said nothing.

We stared at each other for a few moments. He was presumably not a new soldier, because his face revealed nothing at all and he held my eyes until I looked awkwardly away, down to his mouth, which was a grim line.

"Um," I licked my lips, "Chantry?"

He nodded and pointed.

Oh. The biggest building, towering over everything. Right, yes. Yeah, that'd be it. I felt stupid because it even looked like a traditional church, to some extent. I nodded. "Cool. Thanks."

I paused, but it was  _balls fucking cold_  in the snow so I clutched my bedsheet around myself more tightly and hurried toward the chantry. Haven didn't so much have a main street even as it did have snowy walkways between stout wooden buildings, and even those spaces were pretty narrow in places.

Narrow spaces meant I could actually hear what some of the people were talking about as I went past. I'd been accused in the past of thinking everything was about me, but this time it seriously and actually  _was_  all about me.

"-thought Seekers knew everything," somebody muttered from the crowd.

"It's complicated. We were all frightened -" returned another. I kept moving, swallowing hard as their voices faded with distance.

"That's him. He stopped the Breach from getting any bigger -"

"- _I_  heard he was meant to close it entirely," mused another woman's voice, soft but faintly accusing, which -  _rude_. Dude, I wasn't even  _from_  this world and I'd done my best. What the hell was  _she_  doing?

Admittedly, I'd done my best because of the very real likelihood that the mark would have killed me if I hadn't due to its link with the Breach. But, I mean, I wanted to save people as much as the next person, and I  _had_  tried my best.

"Still, it's more than anyone else has done," she went on. "Demons would have had us otherwise..."

Damn right, lady.

I made it to the chantry itself, and found the outside surrounded by the clerics - women, mostly, in their strange chantry robes. Some were of slightly different designs than others, which probably denoted rank or something but to me they just looked a bit weird with their sunburst emblems and candy-cane colouring.

"Chanceller Roderick says that the chantry wants nothing to do with us," one of the sisters was saying, leaning against the wall of the chantry nearby the door. She looked worried behind the pale hair tumbling messily into her face.

"That isn't Chancellor Roderick's decision, sister," said another of the women. She sounded sharp and angry, but I doubted it was with the other priest. Her eyes drifted to me as I went past.

I tried for a smile, but it came out as a kind of shaky smile-shaped grimace, and I guess my being enormous and hulking made it seem more intimidating, because she recoiled and her brow furrowed.

I turned away and hurried forward.

The chantry itself was dimly lit on the inside. The windows let in only a little light through their stained glass, and there were actually candles instead of braziers here. It smelled of incense, something spicy-soft and sharp, and a nose-tickling, neck-ruffling sort of dusty scent. There were few people inside, mostly tiny human clerics, and I felt huge and ungainly as I walked through to the door at the end.

Despite the huge heavy door, could hear the yelling behind it before I even got there and I paused, listening.

"He should be taken to Val Royeaux immediately, to be tried by whomever becomes Divine!" Annnnd that was Chancellor Roderick, because  _of course_  it was. I scowled fiercely.

What the hell was  _wrong_ with this dick? Did he have some better method for closing the rifts that were stilly hanging about across the continent, allowing demons into the world? Like, no, I wasn't thrilled about being the person with the mark stuck in my hand, but the Chancellor really pissed me off.

Churchmen were meant to at least  _try_  to look like they gave a fuck about people, in my view.

"I do not believe he is guilty," came Cassandra's ringing voice from behind the door.

"The Qunari  _failed_ , Seeker." Said the Chancellor, clearly very exasperated with the argument. He went on with a dramatic: "The Breach is still in the sky. For all you know, he intended it this way."

"I do not believe that."

"What you  _believe_  is not-"

Yeah, I'd eavesdropped long enough.

I opened the door. "Hi," I said, knocking it closed behind me with one heel. I mis-measured the force necessary to move the heavy door so it slammed kind of loudly. Whoops.

Roderick flinched at the noise and then whirled toward me. His pale skin looked even paler by the inconstant candle light. "Chain him," he said to the silent guards. "I want him prepared for travel to the capital to face trial."

"Disregard that," Cassandra interrupted before the guards had even moved. "And leave us."

It was completely unsurprising to me that they obeyed Cassandra.

"You walk a dangerous line, Seeker," growled Roderick.

Cassandra looked at him like he was some kind of gross thing stuck to the bottom of her armoured foot. If she'd looked at me like that, I'd have been worried about... well, becoming some kind of gross thing stuck to the bottom of her armoured foot.

Kind of... heavily armoured, was Cassandra, if you take my meaning.

I looked at Roderick. I contemplated, for a second, trying to explain my position to him. The chances of that working were minimal, obviously. Then I thought about stepping up to him and looming over him, because I was  _huge_  and it might as well net me some petty amusement, but then that was also probably dumb in the long run.

Instead I scratched my nose.

"There was a tiny terrified elf who said you wanted to talk to me?" I said to Cassandra instead. "Sorry, I just woke up. I didn't realise it'd be so..." I waved one hand at the roof, which was meant to indicate the Breach above, "...draining? I feel like I could nap forever."

"And yet here you stand, hale and whole," drawled Roderick, "A convenient result, insofar as you're concerned."

I opened my mouth on the phrase  _quiet, chancellor, the adults are talking_ , but closed it with the words unvoiced. No point, I reminded myself stiffly. Picking a fight with him would only make him seem right in the eyes of other people, even.

I sighed instead.

"The Breach is not the only threat we face," said a soft feminine voice, clear and bell-like, faintly accented. Leliana stepped out of the shadows of the room, stalking toward us with a grace that was very smooth and only mildly terrifying.

Christ, I hadn't even noticed her until she'd made herself obvious.

Her approach was best characterised as a slow stalk. "Someone was behind the explosion at the conclave, someone the Most Holy did not expect," she said silkily.

"I'm a suspect?" Roderick sputtered.

"You," she said, lifting her chin, "and many others."

"But not the prisoner, I see," he said with a very bitter twist to his mouth. "So all this - that thing on his hand? All a  _coincidence_  then?"

"Not coincidence," interrupted Cassandra, "Providence. The Maker sent him to us in our darkest hour."

"Auugh," I said, although I had definitely intended to sound more sensible when I opened my mouth. And then 'ah' noises kept happening, like my mouth couldn't handle anything difficult like words that actually made sense.

Eyes turned onto me.

"Shit," I said, cringing away from the gazes of Cassandra, Leliana and Roderick.

Cassandra opened her mouth. There was a pause. She closed it again.

"Yes?" murmured Leliana.

I opened my mouth, realised that we were actually inside one of their religious places, and I was surrounded by very high ranking clergy: forget the chancellor, Sister Leliana and Seeker Pentaghast were practically a chunk of the upper management of the Chantry right here. Cassandra, I knew, had saved the Divine from a motherfucking  _dragon attack_  and been appointed her right hand, and Leliana...

Leliana had been the Divine's spymaster, basically.

They were very devout.

I swallowed. "Um, maybe we could. Hold off. On the 'providence' business," I hedged.

One of Cassandra's eyebrows rose a fraction.

"Indeed," sneered Chancellor Roderick.

"Oh, quite the contrary," purred Leliana with a smile that was a little too smug. "People are already calling you the Herald of Andraste. And who are we to say they are not correct?"

Cassandra shot her a look, as though she disapproved of crying "providence" for political reasons - which Leliana plainly  _was_  - but she certainly didn't seem to mind doing the same for regular religious crazy reasons.

"You believe the Maker sent a Qunari-"

I raised my hand. "Just for the record," I interrupted, "I'm not actually  _Qunari_."

There was an awkward pause as three sets of eyes drifted up - and  _up_  - to my horns.

"You mean you do not follow the Qun," Leliana said after that moment.

"Whether or not he follows the oxmen's religion is beside the point," said Roderick sharply. "He is  _Qunari_ , and the Maker-"

"Hey," I interrupted again. "That's like saying 'you're human so you  _must_ be Andrastian'."

Roderick and Cassandra looked at me. It took me a moment, and then I realised that literally all the humans they knew  _were Andrastian_.

Leliana's face was at best unreadable.

I rubbed my forehead. My nails were sharper than I'd been expecting, and the left thin scratches. "Christ. Never mind."

"I will not stand idly by and allow the Divine's murderer to go unpunished while-"

"Chancellor," growled Cassandra, lifting her chin and staring straight at him. It was the work of a moment for her to turn, fetch, and show him a heavy, ornate book.

The leather was dyed black, and upon it was the symbol I had a feeling I'd be seeing a lot of: a starburst, the centre of which was an eye, and through it a sword.

"You know what this is," she said, banging the book upon the table. Her gaze was fierce and furious as she stared the Chancellor down. "A writ from the Divine, granting us authority to act."

"The Divine is  _dead,_ " Roderick said, but he was looking at the book on the table as though it was soon to sprout fangs and rip into him.

Cassandra marched closer to him, and honestly I had a great deal of trouble contemplating the idea that she might actually need any more authority than her own - like, ever. "We  _will_  close the Breach, we  _will_  find those responsible and we  _will_  restore order. With or without your approval."

Her voice rang out, and the last word left an echo in the air that seemed to hang forever.

Roderick was white. "This is not the last you will hear of this," he said in a quiet, firm voice.

He left with his head high, and the door thudded closed behind him.

Cassandra took a deep, steadying breath and leaned upon the table. She seemed to stare straight through the book there.

"We aren't ready for this," said Leliana, soft but grave. That dangerous cat-with-the-canary purr was gone from her voice. "We have no leader, no numbers and now - no Chantry support."

She looked sideways at Cassandra, who didn't even acknowledge the glance, but I did wonder if there was a hint of accusation in that look - as though a less straightforward approach might have swayed the Chancellor? Hard to say.

"The Breach remains," Cassandra said when she finally looked up. "And your mark is still the only thing that has the power to close it. Leliana is right, but we have no choice: we must act now, with you at our side."

I chewed my bottom lip. I knew I hadn't any choice, not really. I had nowhere else to go, and with the sky ripped in half and spewing out demons, it wasn't as though the was somehow a  _more pressing matter_  for me to attend to somewhere.

Cassandra held out her hand, watching me expectantly.

"We're going to restore order?" I looked at her hand uncertainly. "No - no crusades, no by-the-sword conversions?"

Cassandra's face went flat and stony for a second, and I knew I had offended her - but whether that was because she wanted to convert everybody we encountered by the sword, or because she was offended by the idea, I couldn't say. But Leliana interrupted smoothly before either of us could make the situation worse.

"That is the plan," she said, leaning her hip against the table.

I took Cassandra's hand.

It was smaller, much smaller, but firm and steady.

We shook.

"Demons falling from the sky are pretty much bad business no matter how you look at it," I said, glancing from Leliana to Cassandra and back. They were both beautiful, dangerous people.

Both of them looked satisfied.

...I had no idea what I was doing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our Hero meets some secondary characters, messes around and tries to adjust. It isn't as easy as she'd like.

I _really_ had no idea what I was doing. After Cassandra's dramatic announcement that the Inquisition was reborn, I was loosed upon the general population of Haven with no really firm instructions except that we'd reconvene at nightfall to discuss our next steps.

It seemed very strange to me that I could go from being 'The Prisoner' to being somebody who was allowed to wander at leisure and expected to show up to important tactical meetings. But I supposed the mark on my hand made it impractical for Cassandra and Leliana to try to work around me instead of with me, and they were both very practical women.

"Harrit might have something that fits for you," Leliana had said before she left, eyeing my bed sheet shawl. "He works just outside the walls."

That... was probably a good idea, actually. In the absence of other directions, I took her comment to heart and went to find the smithy.

I wasn't thrilled with how pretty much everyone looked at me as soon as I stepped outside the chantry and back into the cold of Haven. I was easily recognised - a towering, horned man standing a least foot taller than even the biggest humans, and as soon as people recognised me they started talking.

I'd thought it was that they were just close enough to hear before, but now that I was paying more attention, I could see why people thought I was out of earshot when they glanced at me and spoke to one another. I was definitely _not_ out of earshot - but I was picking up sounds from a little further away than expected. Huh.

Knowing that they weren't necessarily being rude on purpose didn't really make me more comfortable with the low murmur of people talking about me as I moved through Haven. I stared at the snow as I walked, steering with my peripheral vision. At the very least I knew - mostly - where I was going.

Haven was walled, as presumably most towns were in this world of siege engines and limited aerial tactics. It looked fairly sturdy upon a cursory inspection, but if you actually stopped and thought about battering rams and siege engines and actual _magic_ , it became obvious that the palisade surrounding Haven was more of a gesture than a real defence.

If you were worried about disorganised brigands and bandits though, it would probably hold up pretty well. Haven wasn't really the sort of place that was prepared to protect itself from an army.

I rubbed my forehead, staring at nothing stupidly while I loitered just in front of the gate out. Prepared or not, Haven _would_ face an army eventually. Unless I fucked up pretty badly - Haven's destruction was pretty much on the cards as long as I closed the Breach, which...

...well, I wasn't going to _leave it there_ , was I? Holes in the sky were pretty bad news.

I wondered if there was any way I could find to alert Leliana to the attack that would come after closing the Breach without tipping my hand. The simplest plan was probably to claim I'd seen something in a prophetic dream. Hell, I was already supposedly some kind of holy figure so I might as well work it. It had the benefit of being completely unprovable, which was nice.

 _Solas_ , though. He both travelled through dreams and knew intimately what the mark was actually capable of. He was unlikely to believe that I had suddenly developed powers of prophecy - whether he'd tell anybody else was up for debate, but tipping my hand to Solas would probably be _worse_ than Leliana.

Fabricated evidence was another possibility, but between Leliana and Varric I had a sneaking suspicion that they'd see right through me.

"Are you just going to stand there? You do know you're in the way," somebody drawled, and I twitched and turned to see a grouchy-faced man with wheat-blond hair. His cheeks and chin were stubbled, despite the relatively early hour. He was carrying a crate, and I blinked and got out of his way.

"Sorry," I said, feeling huge and clumsy, and pushed the heavy wooden gate open for him.

He gave me a grumpy expression and jiggled the crate against his hip with an effortful grunt. It looked like it was too heavy for him. It smelled metallic. Maybe armour?

"Do you want me to carry that?" I offered, peering down at him.

If his reaction was anything to go by, the answer was a resounding _yes_. "If anything gets damaged," he said, shoving his crate at me with relief, "I'll take it out of your hide."

"Friendly, aren't you?" I asked, hefting the crate to my shoulder and bracing it there with one hand. It wasn't that heavy... or, well, it didn't _seem_ that heavy. From the way he was now glowering at it, it was plenty heavy enough for this guy. "You're welcome, by the way. Are you a - what, a porter or -"

"Do I look like an elf to you?" he asked scathingly.

I blinked, wondering if that was as incredibly racist as it sounded to me, or if this was just the accepted level of racism among humans here.

It occurred to me that I was a towering vashoth and I could get away with a lot.

A _lot_.

"Other than the dwarves, the rest of you sort of all look the same. Short, kinda pinkish. Hornless." I shrugged my huge shoulders, nearly dislodging my bed sheet. "Sorry."

"I'm human." He gave me a look that could have fried an egg. "I'm a merchant," he ground out. "Seggrit."

I nodded politely. "Seggrit," I repeated, "Nice to meet you."

He eyed me like he was waiting for something.

I ignored it. "Where are we going with this?" I asked, peering around. Outside the walls, I could see soldiers practising against one another, all grunting and gasping, breath steaming in the cold air. I sniffed uncertainly when the bitter wind brought the faint vinegary-salty smell of them to my nose. They must have been working up a hell of a sweat, I decided.

I couldn't see Cullen, but I could occasionally hear his voice when it rose.

To my left were a couple of tents, some milling templars and a few priests, and a dismal little corral inside which a swaybacked draught horse dozed.

"Smithy," grunted Seggrit, and pointed beyond the corral. Oh. Well, that was fortunate.

I didn't know anything about smithing, but I was pretty sure they used fire - really hot fire, hot enough to melt metals. The idea left me feeling uncertain about the amount of wood in the vicinity. The smithy backed on to the palisade - wood - and was right next to a small cabin - also wood - and was supported by heavy wooden beams.

I supposed I should just be relieved they seemed to have a stone floor in there. "Is this Harrit?" I asked, squinting. "Leliana said I should see him."

"He's the bald one with the ugly moustache," Seggrit informed me, nodding to a lean man with huge biceps leaning against the low stone wall surrounding the smithy. "Aniel!" Seggrit bellowed, loudly enough to make me jump.

A tall woman appeared from the depths of the forge. Her sleeves were rolled over her forearms to accommodate reinforced gloves and she had on a leather apron: clearly some kind of smith, then. She had auburn hair, freckled skin and a wide, thin mouth.

"Is this all?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at the crate upon my shoulder. "Threnn's asked for more -"

"Threnn gets what she pays for, not what she asks for," Seggrit said, baring his teeth.

"Who do you think is protecting your hide from the demons?" spat Aniel, storming forward to prod Seggrit in the chest. She was taller than he was, and from the look of her probably stronger, too. "You think those soldiers fight half so well without good weapons?"

"Wow, I'm just going to-" I wasn't sure if the bottom of the crate should get wet, so I balanced it on the low stone wall around the forge. "- yeah. You, uh, good to meet you-" I waved awkwardly and backed away.

Seggrit shot me a look that was absolute poison, and Aniel didn't even seem to notice me leaving, so invested was she in yelling at Seggrit.

I was so intent upon backing away from that confrontation that I almost walked into Harrit. "Shit," I said, waving my arms in the air around his shoulders as though that would make him somehow better off. "Sorry."

Harrit looked at me.

His moustache was really pretty unfortunate. Seggrit was a dick, but he wasn't wrong on that count. Although it was an impressive shade of red.

"I've been expecting you to show up eventually." His eyes narrowed. "We weren't sure what to outfit you in. The Lady Cassandra said you were a warrior, but that elf said you were a mage. Being at the back or the front of a fight makes a bit of difference," he added drily.

The forge was hot, but I was pretty sure that was not why my face was so warm. I felt even more out of place.

"I'm not really either," I admitted, scratching the back of my neck. "I'm... a mage, I guess," or so they told me, "but I don't know any magic - I've never learned. And... when the demons started coming, I ended up hitting them because, you know, they were going to eat my face."

He frowned up at me. "From what I've heard, you're going to end up hoofing it around half of southern Thedas, closing rifts. You'll need _something_." He looked at my bed sheet pointedly.

I felt my own brows furrow. "I guess," I said. Then, "I'm not a smith or a fighter or- anything, really." I wanted to mention that my degree was in criminology and my job was in IT to describe exactly how unqualified I was to discuss armouring decisions, but neither would exist here - at least, not in any form I knew. I shook my head. "I'm more like an academic - a scholar. I don't..." I trailed off uncertainly.

He looked to the sky briefly, like it could help him deal with me. Instead it just put a grim expression on his face. "You don't know anything about fighting?"

I thought about that. "Well," I said slowly. "We fought a bunch of shades and a pride demon. I'm, uh, I'm pretty strong, so mostly I just hit them in a head. Seeker Pentaghast gave me a club," I added helpfully. "She said I was going to break the staff."

And now his expression was the facial equivalent of _Maker have mercy, how did you survive to adulthood?_ I was getting some alarmed sideways glances from the others in the forge, too, although mostly it was too loud for them to overhear much.

"I can work with that," was all Harrit said, though. "We'll have to modify the design for your horns," he added thoughtfully, peering at my head.

I sighed. "Yeah," I said, thinking of mutilated pillows.

"Biggest horns I've ever seen on one of you oxmen," he added, as though he'd only just realised it.

I rubbed one horn self-consciously. They were big. Big, broad, glossy and black.

"Right," he said after a moment's pause. "Come with me. This will take time, but you can't be stuck out here in nothing but a sheet."

"I can agree with that," I said, shivering slightly. Sure, the fires were hot, but now I was no longer moving and I was very aware that my back was to a broad, frozen lake. It was _cold_.

I ended up swaddled in the fur of a - god, I had no idea. It was brown and definitely had belonged to a very large animal at some point, and it seemed to have arrived at Harrit's forge straight from the tanner, because it was more or less intact - and huge. The fur was coarse and heavy.

"Am I wearing a bear?" I hazarded while he did something with an awl that was a little too close to my skin for comfort.

"Yes." He kicked a stool toward me, "Sit," he said, sounding annoyed, and I sat on the rickety three-legged thing so he could access my shoulders without a step ladder.

"So is being an armour-smith also like being a tailor or something?" I wondered after several minutes of silence. I had no idea what it was he was doing, but he seemed pretty confident about it.

"Oh, yeah," said one of the other workers, peering over Harrit's shoulder. I looked sideways at him, and found a man with a short, dark beard looking contemplatively at my horns. "We're just dying to see what the winter fashions coming out of Val Royeaux are. Maybe we can work some velvet heels into the plate armour, eh, Harrit?"

"It's lace this season, you heathen," called a low contralto voice. "We'll make all the armour out of filigree - that'll solve Threnn's iron supply problems!"

I craned my neck to see Aniel had returned from her adventures in bellowing at Seggrit, and seemed much more cheerful. I hoped that meant she'd won, because that man was an ass.

"Stay still," Harrit said, and I guiltily returned to looking straight ahead.

"Is it actually lace?" somebody else asked.

"How would I know?" Aniel wondered, to the amusement of several other voices.

Between the warmth of the forge and the friendly banter between the handful of blacksmiths working there - and their apprentices, in a few cases - I began to relax. I hadn't realised I'd been quite so wound up, but between Cassandra and Chancellor Roderick, I supposed it wasn't much of a surprise.

Despite the noise, as soon as I had begun to relax I felt sleepy. I watched the shadows of the forge move in a daze, and paid no attention to the passing of time.

I jumped when Harrit clapped me on the shoulder. "You're nearly done," he said gruffly.

I blinked, and surrendered the bear skin to him when he gestured to it. "It's warm," I informed him.

He snorted. "'Course it's warm. How do you think bears keep themselves all winter?"

I... had not considered that. I opened my mouth to say 'hibernation?' and then shut it again. It was probably a rhetorical question.

It was only a few minutes before he shoved the skin back toward me, and now I could see it as a rough but perfectly wearable item of clothing: a vest, basically, one that wrapped around and closed with a strip of hide that fastened about the waist, which meant I could put it on like a coat. No messing around with the horns, thank god. It also covered my arse, which, again: _thank god_.

Harrit inspected me and nodded after a second. "It'll do for the moment - though you don't leave until I've finished with your gear. You look dead on your feet, anyway. Might want to get some rest."

I frowned, causing one of the apprentices nearby to flinch back from my face. The joys of looking like a monster, I guessed. "Yeah, if there's still time before Seeker Pentaghast wants me," I agreed.

He snorted, and then looked pointedly at my hand. I pressed it flat to my trousers self-consciously, hiding the mark. "You think they're going to start the meeting without you?"

...another point I hadn't considered.

"Huh," I said. Then, "I'll think about it."

"Go check in with Adan at least. You won't be closing anything if you collapse." Harrit shook his head, and with that cheery thought, returned to his metalwork.

I did consider going back to bed in the little cabin that was evidently mine for the time being, but it felt sort of... lazy. Everybody else was up and about, and most of them were even working - provided they weren't clerics, at least. I wasn't entirely sure what counted as work for clerics, though, so it seemed possible that standing around and gossiping was in their job description.

I had just about resolved to go find Adan anyway - he was the apothecary, which meant he'd probably have plenty of boring but helpful tasks to throw my way, and if they weren't too taxing they'd be perfect for my state of mind right now - but as I was climbing up the steps just inside Haven's gates, I was waylaid by a very short but alarmingly formidable foe.

"So," drawled Varric, looking up at me from over his crossed arms, "now that Cassandra's out of earshot, are you holding up alright?"

I hesitated. Remembering my mistake last time, I got out of the walk way and headed toward Varric's little fire. There was one other person there, an Inquisition scout from his armour, but the air was warmer.

Varric wasn't the least bit deterred by this. He just followed me and kept talking. "I mean, you go from being the most wanted criminal in Thedas to joining the armies of the faithful. Most people would have spread that out over more than one day."

I snorted softly. He did not know the _half_ of it. This wasn't my world, wasn't my culture, wasn't even my fucking _body_. Christ.

"This is literally the weirdest shit that's ever happened to me," I admitted. "By a _lot_."

"It's the weirdest shit that's ever happened to _me_ ," Varric said slowly, squinting up at the sky, "and that's saying something."

"Really?" I raised my eyebrows at him. "I thought the whole thing with Kirkwall's Knight-Commander was meant to be..."

Varric scraped a thumb over his nose thoughtfully. "There's 'messing with creepy artifacts you don't understand' weird, and then there's ' _hole in the sky'_ weird," he explained after a moment. "For days now we've all been staring at that thing. I still can't believe anyone was in there and lived."

I looked away from the Breach. It was scary. The whole thing was just... scary. I'd been running on automatic: go here, kill this, hope nothing terrible happens. It was working for now, but there was a good chance it wouldn't last.

The answer was probably to sit down and go through it with myself methodically like an actual responsible adult: _What are you feeling? Why are you feeling it? What can you do to manage it? Make a list. Have a plan. Be organised. Be prepared._

On the other hand, there was very little I wanted to do _less_. I sighed. "I think it's best if I keep busy and don't think about it too hard," I muttered, kicking the snow. I kicked it a little too hard - unaware of my strength, _again_ \- and took out a chunk of the dirt below it, too. Ugh, whatever.

"Well," said Varric slowly, looking at me with terribly shrewd eyes. "Any time you need a distraction, you know where I am."

I smiled, weak but genuine. "Yeah. Thanks, Varric. I'll remember it."

I stretched before I continued on my way to see Adan. Getting to him from here required going past Solas's cabin, but he seemed to be inside, if the moving shadow behind his windows was any indication.

I breathed a sigh of relief and continued on to the apothecary, which was right next door.

"Back from the dead again?" asked the chief apothecary when I thumped my horns on the door frame and flinched downwards. Adan was reasonably tall, with a heavy black beard and clothing that looked a lot like mage robes, even if he didn't seem to be a mage. "I shouldn't be surprised. You oxmen are as tough as old leather."

"Not quite that tough," I said, shrugging one shoulder. "Anything you need done I can help with?"

Adan waved away my attempts at helping with the more mundane tasks - grinding seeds and leaves, distilling potions of elfroot to use as bases for a lot of the others, that sort of thing. Instead he frowned and suggested I look around for the notes made by the previous chief apothecary, who had died at the enclave.

It was a more taxing task than I wanted to commit to, honestly, but I didn't want to seem rude. I'd come asking for work and he'd provided it.

I had a vague inkling of where the notes he wanted were anyway. Somewhere outside the village walls, if I remembered right, and beyond the practising Inquisition soldiers. It wasn't that far to walk, and unless you counted the armed men out there - who were on our side - the meanest thing that would come this close to Haven right now was an angry nug.

It was nice to be on my own. Not just, like, ostensibly on my own but with everybody staring at me and muttering, and not that feeling of being completely on my own that just meant there was nobody to rely on but myself, but _actually on my own._ As soon as I got out past the lines of tents (and avoided making eye contact with two bickering Templars), I was surrounded by trees and snow and rock.

I found the cabin, of which I had only vague memories, pretty quickly. There was little enough in there, and what there was looked like research materials. I glanced through the notes and crinkled my nose. I could read them, and I even understood the parts that looked like recipes, but - the scribblings about how one _arrived_ at the recipes? Yeah, those were pretty much indecipherable to me.

Oh, well. Good thing _I_ wasn't an apothecary.

There were more than just these notes in the cabin, though, and some fool had left an unattended candle right there. I took the opportunity to glance through the writing: unsurprisingly there were some parts of the Chant of Light littering the place - Haven having been the site of a crazed Andrastian cult before it became a popular place for mainstream pilgrimage basically ensured that there would be religious writing left all around the place - but among those was also a copy of _The Randy Dowager Quarterly_ and a dismembered chapter of _Hard in Hightown._

 _Hard in Hightown_ was by far the best written - for fiction, at least. It was concise, indulgent, and even though it was very genre specific, it was easy to read and eminently digestible. Perfect light reading, really.

I didn't think anybody but Varric would appreciate it if I told them that I thought _Hard in Hightown_ was better written than the Chant of Light.

As it was, I got kind of caught up in the chapter that had been left laying about and the sun was setting before I realised that I was squinting at the pages in the encroaching dusk. That made me realise precisely how much time I'd spent loitering in an empty cabin reading trashy fiction.

"Shit," I muttered, and got guiltily to my feet.

I probably didn't have time for it, but I still went and dropped the salvaged notes off in Adan's cabin before I made my way to the chantry. "On the edge of a breakthrough," Adan promised, peering over his predecessor's notes with a gleaming eye.

"Sounds great," I said, more for the sake of having said something encouraging than because I knew what on earth he was actually talking about.

He saw right through me, glowered darkly, and kicked me out without further preamble. I tried (with only moderate success) not to take offence to that, scuffed my feet in the snow, and turned toward the chantry.

Whether I was ready or not, it was time for a war meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I know at least one of my readers actually hasn't played DA:I, so I'm just letting anybody in that position know that Aniel is a background OC, not a canon character.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero shows up to a war council. Advisors are introduced, plans are laid, and awkward silences abound.

Cassandra met me at the doors. Together we walked back through the soft dusty hush of the chantry and toward the war room.

"Does it trouble you?" she asked as we went. Our footsteps fell with a creak of leather and the soft jangle of chain.

"It's really, really weird," I admitted, looking at my hand. The glow of the mark was soft and steady now. I suspected it wouldn't flare up again unless it was responding to something else. "It's stopped hurting though," I added.

I contemplated telling her that it was the sparkly green light of obligation, but Cassandra's humour, when she admitted to any, leaned to the dry. I doubted she'd be impressed with my flippancy.

"We take our victories where we can," she said with a thin smile - and there it was. Dry, grim. Amusing, but not really _funny_. "You have bought us time. Solas believes that a second attempt may prove successful, provided the mark has more power - the same level of power used to open the Breach in the fist place. That is not easy to come by."

I hesitated. "That's a lot of power. ...which means a lot of mages." I rubbed my forehead. It was a gesture of frustration, the way I might have run my hands through my hair before. Now my horns were in the way, but I had plenty of broad, ugly qunari forehead. There was a weird ridge above my eyebrows, curling up and out to burst from my skin in huge curved horns. It felt... weird. Very weird.

Much weirder than the goddamn mark, as it happened. I wondered how Cassandra would have felt if I'd told her that. I glanced sideways at her.

If anything, she looked pensive. "We have some ideas," she said.

I raised my eyebrows, trying to remember this part of the game. Ah, that was right. Templars, wasn't it? Mages or templars. _That_ was a decision that cropped up a lot.

The war room was only a little different to how it had been this morning. Instead of the directive of the late Divine, there was an enormous map of this part of the world spread over the big table, but actually the first thing that caught my eye was a veritable explosion of gold cloth.

I blinked at the woman wearing it: soft coffee-coloured skin, melting dark eyes. She was pretty, in a common sort of way: a personable, feminine sort of pretty, not intimidating. She seemed to have gone out of her way to maintain that specific aesthetic, and the golden silk of her dress was, presumably, just part of the plan. I didn't like it, but nobody else was staring. Maybe that was the fashion in Antiva? Or maybe she just liked to draw eyeballs. She certainly had my attention.

"Josephine Montilyet," Cassandra said, noticing the direction of my eyes. "Our ambassador and chief diplomat."

"You are even taler than I'd expected," she said with a smile that was both winning and a little... nervous, around the edges. I tried out a comforting smile, but her eyes just went from my horns to my teeth and her smile became rather fixed.

Oh. Whoops. I really never expected to look intimidating.

Cassandra was oblivious to her discomfort. "You have met Commander Cullen," she said, gesturing to him with one hand.

"Briefly, on the field," he interjected. "I am glad to see you survived."

I squinted at him, trying to gauge the sincerity of that statement. To my astonishment, he did actually seem pretty sincere about it. He hadn't seemed that friendly when I'd met him.

I guessed everyone was cranky when they were killing demons.

"He commands the Inquisition's forces. And of course you know Sister Leliana," Cassandra said, moving on before I could gather my wits and greet Cullen at all.

Leliana melted away from the wall, her armour glimmering gently in the candle light where it peeked out from beneath her cowl, and she stood with her hands clasped behind her back. Delicately, she said: "My position here involves a degree of..."

Cassandra glanced at her once and then looked back at the map spread out on the table. "She's our spymaster," she said, interrupting Leliana's careful explanation.

There was a brief, awkward pause.

"Yes," murmured Leliana after that beat of silence. "Tactfully put, Cassandra."

I felt my lips curve without permission, mostly because Cassandra seemed to have absolutely no idea that she'd done anything questionable.

"Okay," I said slowly. "That's - I mean, good to meet you all. Seeker Pentaghast said something about needing more power to close the Breach?"

They glanced at each other. There was a heavy moment there where nobody spoke, and then several people were talking all at once. Cassandra, bless her blunt soul, said: "Yes. We need more power to seal the Breach. We are still discussing-"

"We know we must approach the rebel mages for help," Leliana said smoothly. "We-"

"I still disagree," Cullen interrupted with a hard voice. He was nowhere near as smooth as Leliana but it was obvious he had no problem putting his opinion forward. "We could approach the Templars."

I wrinkled my nose. Templars were basically unquestioning monks in full armour with big swords, and honestly even if I hadn't been - according to Solas and Cassandra at least, since I'd seen little evidence of it myself - a mage, they'd have scared the everloving _shit_ out of me. People with unshakable religious convictions and big weapons were basically terrifying no matter where you were.

"We need more power," said Cassandra through her teeth, like she was desperately trying to drag us back toward the point, "enough magic poured into the Mark-"

"Might _kill us all_ ," Cullen said pointedly. His face reddened as he became more exasperated with the discussion. "Templars could suppress the Breach. Weaken it - then we could close it with the same power the Herald used before."

"Pure speculation." Leliana's face was smooth and expressionless, but her voice was annoyed.

" _I_ was a templar, I know what they're capable of," Cullen snapped, glowering at her.

 _"Unfortunately_ ," Josephine said loudly. She paused, and there was a silence that hung in the air following her interruption. She looked around at the group, evidently checking to make sure she had everybody's attention. "Unfortunately," she repeated in a better indoor voice, "Neither group will even speak to us yet. The chantry has denounced the Inquisition. And you, specifically."

I had known that would happen, but I hadn't really anticipated how upset Cassandra and Cullen would look at the statement. Josephine seemed deeply sympathetic in her own way, eyebrows knitted and pretty brow furrowed. Leliana just watched.

"That's not really surprising, is it?" I said slowly. Their faces made it look like somebody had suffered horribly, and I supposed that was meant to mean that being denounced by the chantry was a really bad thing here. I wondered if it was anything like being excommunicated? Well, that didn't bother me in the slightest. I was under no obligation to recognise the Andrastian chantry as any kind of authority - except the kind that came with shields and swords.

That led me back to thinking about templars.

Yeah. _No templars._

"Look, I'm a fucking huge oxman with a glowing hand." I used my glowing hand to wave toward my horns, and everybody obligingly stared at them like I'd finally given them permission to gawk. "I'd be _astonished_ if they hadn't."

Cassandra's lips thinned. "And you are not Andrastian."

"I'm not." I eyed her.

It was a touchy topic for me - not Andrastian religion specifically, but religion in general. I'd had too many years of pointed stories of good young ladies who got married in the eyes of god and were rewarded and wicked, faithless tarts who came to no good end; too many iterations of _we just want to know that you're going where we're going, in the end._ I'd had too many trips to chapel, coaxed and bullied into my pew - and all eyes on the girl who can't take communion, who doesn't want to receive the priest's blessing.

Too much _why won't you be confirmed, just for me_ , and _I thought you'd do it because you love me, it doesn't even mean anything to you, why won't you just do it_ , and _aren't you scared there's a hell?_ _I'm scared you're going to Hell. I'm scared for you._

I pried my jaw open to speak, and it was a difficult thing. I didn't _like_ talking about religion. It made me defensive and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I'd signed on to work with a religious organisation, so I was going to have to get used to ignoring it without flipping out.

"I don't have to believe in the Maker to believe that a hole in the sky is a bad thing," I pointed out, and okay, there was a definite edge in my voice. I could hear it. "Andrastian or atheist, I reckon we're all pretty much on the same side here, so whether I'm religious or not shouldn't matter to anyone. Raining demons: bad. Clear skies: good."

"At this point I think we'd all take a nice blizzard, actually," Cullen muttered. "Anything that means we can stop staring at the Breach."

Casandra glanced over at him, and then shifted her gaze to Leliana. For all their differences of view and character, there was some shorthand communication in that gaze, and Leliana shrugged one shoulder. Cassandra didn't look happy, but she evidently conceded the point because she didn't go on.

"Regardless of your religious views," Josephine said, neatly dismissing that part of the issue - and rather ironically I found myself thinking, thank _god -_ "some people are calling you - a qunari - the Herald of Andraste. We are, according to the Chantry, a heretical movement. It limits our options, and approaching either the mages or the templars for help in closing the Breach is currently out of the question."

I felt a headache coming on. I'd known this would happen. I'd heard the whispers and I had the very great advantage of having some knowledge of the future - or a future, anyway - and I'd known it was coming. It was still so bloody _stupid_. I was one stupid person who'd had a magical accident, and _Andraste_ had fuck all to do with it. It seemed absurd that they could let this get so out of hand.

"People saw what you did at the temple, how you stopped the breach from growing. They have also heard about the woman in the rift behind you. Some believe it was Andraste herself." A pause. "Even if we stopped the view from spreading -"

"-Which we have not," Cassandra interrupted.

"We have not," Leliana agreed without shame. "The point is," she went on, ignoring Cassandra's soft annoyed noise, "Everyone is talking about you."

"It's quite the title, isn't it?" Cullen asked, lips curving. There was a joke there, but I couldn't figure out if I was in on it or the butt of it. "How do you feel about that?"

"I... have no idea."

"Well, you'll be pleased to know that the chantry has decided for you."

I eyed Cullen, and bit down a bitchy response about how _he'd know all about that_ \- lyrium-addled ex-templar that he was. I didn't say it, but I could feel it, mean and ugly on the tip of my tongue. Which was pretty fucking awful, if you think about it. Stress did not make it okay to take a dig at someone for being a recovering drug addict.

Yeah, I'd be holding my tongue on that one for a while if I could. These guys were lucky that they'd gotten me in my mid-twenties and no earlier, though; five years ago I'd have torn strips off him.

Annnd I'd been looking at him for too long. He was uncomfortable and Leliana was watching me like a hawk.

I sighed and dragged my attention back to the issue at hand. "I'm not the Herald of Andraste. They're wrong. And..." I glanced sideways at Leliana, who was meant to be, well, _invested_ in the religion. She was a sister, for god's sakes. "It seems disrespectful not to correct people. I don't want to be a false prophet in someone else's religion."

"An unusual perspective for a self-professed atheist," drawled Leliana slowly. Her eyes were narrowed. She was such a terribly pretty woman, shrewd and sharp. Where Cassandra's edges were rough, hers were polished.

I glowered at her. I was quickly reaching the end of my tether on this religious bullshit. "What? Not wanting to lie to people about their own religion? You're the religious ones, aren't you? Isn't that what 'Seeker' and 'Sister' means? Shouldn't _you_ guys be more concerned about lying to people about what's 'sacred'?"

I took a deep breath, and only then realised that I'd been yelling, or that I'd leaned forward to plant my hand palm-down on the map. Leliana had iron nerves, because she hadn't so much as flinched in the face of a pissed off, horned giant snarling at her.

I very deliberately shifted away from the table and the map and drew myself back. Using my hands and my body to express myself would have been fine when I was five foot six, rounded and soft and feminine. Now? Now I was a huge guy, rippling with absurd qunari muscles, and it was dead threatening. I had to make sure I didn't fall into the habit. I was probably lucky that Leliana was as badass as she was.

I took a deep, fortifying breath. "I don't have to share your beliefs to understand that encouraging this 'Herald of Andraste' bullshit is a massive dick move."

"A dick... - a _what_?" Josephine frowned. There was no embarrassment there, only confusion and curiosity.

"A-" I paused. Oh. Right. "That's. That's a Vashoth thing. A dick move is... like, an unethical and disrespectful thing to do to another person. Except, uh. Vulgar." I took another deep breath. "You've gotta see where that shit's not okay?" I asked, peering around at them.

There was another pause, which felt very uncomfortable. That was me: I could produce uncomfortable silences the way rifts spewed up demons. Ten a penny, for sure.

"I agree," Cassandra said finally, "but we cannot stop them from spreading this version of events, and it is counterproductive to our own purpose to try. We have larger problems."

"The Breach, yeah. That's another thing," I added, "Is the chantry not concerned about the Breach, like, _at all_? Because if they're wasting time yelling about how we're awful heretics and I'm evil, then they're definitely not using that time to address the Breach?"

"They're concerned," said Cullen, quietly. He sighed. "They just don't think _you_ can fix it."

I rolled my eyes. "Great. So what's _their_ plan, then?"

"They do not have one." Cassandra leaned forward to adjust the map where I'd slammed my hands down on it earlier. Her gloved fingers trailed a path into the Frostbacks thoughtfully.

Of course they didn't.

"Wow, sounds like a winner," I muttered. I scratched one horn, which unfortunately did not feel at all like running my hands through my hair in frustration.

"There is something you can do," said Leliana, tilting her head. I caught a glimmer of blue eyes in the firelight. "A chantry Cleric by the name of Giselle has asked to meet with you. She is not far and knows those involved far better than I. Her assistance could be invaluable."

"More priests," I sighed, thinking of Chancellor Roderick. I recalled vaguely that Giselle was not all that much like him, at least - more of a wishy-washy new age type, if Thedas could be said to have those. "Okay, I'll go meet her. Maybe she can give you guys some kind of leverage."

"That would be best," murmured Leliana, who was already examining other reports.

"We will also need agents to extend our reach beyond this valley," Josephine said firmly, "And you're better suited than anyone to recruit them."

"I am?"

"Certainly," she said with a smile. "You're the only one who can close the rifts."

Well... that was true. And it was also true that there were rifts _all over_. It was a pity I had only vague memories of what sorts of things we were really meant to _do_ in the Hinterlands, but it seemed like closing rifts would be the kind of news that spread around, and that meant more people would witness it, more people would talk, and more people, hopefully, would see the Inqusition as an organisation in which to place their faith.

At least the literal act of closing rifts was easy. I nodded slowly. "I'll give it a shot."

"The fighting in the Hinterlands is particularly fraught," Leliana said. "You did well enough against the pride demon, but it's clear you haven't any training. I understand you are a mage, yes?" she added, narrowing her eyes. "I did not see you cast any spells."

Cullen looked up. "A mage?" he asked incredulously.

It took me a moment to realise he'd been right there when I'd been fighting demons with his soldiers, which meant he'd seen me beating them senseless with a big club. I cringed. "Technically, I guess. I never learnt."

He frowned, like that was really alarming. Ex-templar, I suppose. The idea of a mage outside chantry control must have been off-putting. Despite his intellectual understanding that not all apostates were murderous blood mages, he obviously still had a natural wariness for them.

 _Them._ Well. Us.

Christ on a pogo stick that was fucked up. _Us_.

"Yet you have lived this long without being possessed," Leliana pointed out thoughtfully, drawing my attention back to her.

"Yes. Definitely not possessed," I agreed. Being remotely unclear about _that_ seemed likely to end very badly for me.

Cullen was frowning. "It's uncommon for a mage to grow as old as you have without training - even trained and Harrowed mages occasionally succumb to possession or the lure of blood magic. More now than ever," he added wearily. "It indicates an unusually strong will - and in that case it might be wise to learn. Mage backup is always useful."

"Isn't Solas the only mage in Haven right now?" I asked cautiously, because: wow, how much did I _not_ want Solas fucking around in my life, or my head, or my dreams? He meant well but that elf was a _mess._

"He is an apostate," Cassandra allowed, "and you are right to be wary. But he has been helpful and he has remained to see this through when he could have left." From her, I supposed that was meant to be a ringing character endorsement.

I hesitated. I really did not want to throw Solas under the bus, but at the same time I did not want him to _be the bus that hit me_. And then, _fuck it_ , I thought. "He _has_ been very helpful, yes," I agreed, glancing at Leliana.

She raised her eyebrows. "You think he may have been _too_ helpful," she surmised.

I swallowed, already feeling guilty. "I don't doubt he's very talented," I hedged.

"But?"

"His theories are remarkably accurate, considering they're about a phenomenon we've never seen before." Even as I said it, I could see that Leliana was not at all surprised. "You've been paying attention too."

"Of course," she said in a dismissive tone, causing Josephine, Cullen and Cassandra all to turn to her with varying degrees of surprise.

"And you don't think he's a bit..." _Fucking suspect,_ was how I wanted to finish that sentence, but I refrained. She'd picked up the gist either way.

Leliana smiled. "We all have out secrets," she said, just a little coyly. "I have no reason to believe that Solas's are harmful to us. He has," she nodded toward Cassandra, "been nothing but helpful to our cause. We will continue to watch him, but if you are to learn, he is the only option to teach you. He is, as you say, the only other mage here right now."

I hesitated.

"He kept the mark from killing you while you were unconscious," Cassandra said repressively.

He had, too. I knew that. I couldn't explain to them at all why I was so suspicious, and pretty soon my hesitation would start to look really weird, especially in the face of Leliana's reassurances. I bit my lower lip. "I - all right."

Dammit.

"Good," said Leliana, with a smile that said she could be gracious because she'd already gotten her way. "I'll let him know."

Lucky, lucky me.

"In the meantime, Inquisition soldiers have been sent to the Crossroads to secure its safety. Mother Giselle should be available there to talk, and it's only a day's ride. The surrounds should be relatively safe by the time the soldiers have been through," Cullen said, shifting our conversation back to the point. "You could leave the day after tomorrow and make it that afternoon," he added, measuring the distances on the map with his thumb. "Cassandra?"

"I will go with him," she agreed. "And we will bring Solas, if he is to learn - there is little enough to do on a secured road."

"And Varric," I suggested - he'd be useful, he always was, but I was mostly going to insist because being trapped between Solas and Cassandra wasn't my idea of a good time.

"Varric?" Cassandra repeated dubiously.

"Varric," I said firmly.

"Ranged support," Cullen said, nodding with some approval. "Good choice."

"His contacts with the merchants' guild may well prove useful should you need to secure agents or influence," Josephine said thoughtfully.

"And he is very charming," Leliana added with a smile. "I'm sure he'll be useful for talking to the locals, no?" I wasn't sure if that was a dig at Cassandra's social skills or just a statement of fact, and considering it was Leliana she'd probably intended it to be hard to interpret.

Cassandra made a disgusted noise, but relented.

I very carefully did not smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero is bad at various things. Awkward.

Solas came for me at dawn. He woke me by knocking at the door of my small cabin, which woke me with a jerk and a racing heart - I was always an inconveniently light sleeper. When I stumbled to open it he was leaning against his staff.

He looked amused, probably because I was a complete mess at stupid-o-clock in the morning.

I squinted down at him. "Mnegh?"

"Sister Leliana thought it would be wise to begin as soon as possible," he said.

Oh.

Right, magic lessons. Yeah.

I made a grunting noise that probably sounded like a bear and went to jam my feet into my boots.

"Sister Leliana thinks I'll run away given half a chance," I translated around a yawn, following him out into the snow. It was, predictably, cold.

"Indeed," he said, which I supposed was better than denying it. "Is she correct?"

I eyed him, wondering if he'd somehow learned what I'd said about him yesterday - that I'd directed suspicion in his direction. I decided, after a moment, that none of the advisors were the types to actually tell him that, not least because it was stupid to tell somebody suspicious that they were suspected.

The thought lingered, though. Solas always had more information than I really felt he should have...

"If I haven't run away from the sky vomiting up demons, then learning a bit about magic shouldn't bother me much, don't you think?" I said lightly.

"I should think so," he agreed, "and yet here you stand, an adult qunari, untrained. You are noticeable, unique. You must have actively avoided training for this to be the case."

"I haven't avoided training; there just wasn't anybody to do it unless I went to a Circle." I wasn't sure what it'd be like for vashoth in the Circles, but instinct said it was probably at least as bad as it was for everyone else. Which was to say: shit.

"You chose not to go to a Circle," Solas commented. It was a leading comment, as they all were.

"I might have, in other circumstances," I said. I wasn't even sure it was a lie, because I liked staying inside, learning things. It was certainly the path of least resistance, too. The other side of it was the abusive nature of the Circles, but... Ferelden's wasn't nearly as bad as Kirkwall's. Had I really been born this towering vashoth dude hanging out in Ferelden, and had I been poor or uneducated, I might have signed up for Circle life without a second thought.

And I'd probably have died during the Blight, like so many of their other mages.

There's perspective for you.

Solas's expression was hard and closed off, so I shrugged and went on: "Three square meals a day and an education sounds okay, depending on where you're looking from. Free, illiterate and starving isn't a good combination."

I knew nothing about being illiterate, but missing meals was a shit feeling no matter how big you were.

"Your people are not kind to mages. Those who are not trained and collared are killed," Solas said, glancing sideways at me.

I hummed, a short, soft sound. The issue with people talking about the Qun as though it applied to me was that it was homogenous - people fit in it, or their brains were poisoned and their bodies made to do hard labour until they dropped. If I didn't create the obvious distinction between what I was and what they were, I was worried people would start looking for explanations for my un-qunari-like behaviour, and they might get, ah, weird ideas.

Hopefully not ideas that were actually as weird as the truth, but... well.

"'Qunari'isn't really right, you know," I said cautiously. I actually didn't know much about what Solas might or might not know about the Qun, except that he seemed to think it was, as a philosophy, a violation of a person's natural right to self-determination.

"You prefer tal-vashoth?"

"Just vashoth. I'm not 'tal' anything - just born outside the Qun, with no interest in converting. Vashoth. Grey one."

He paused mid-stride, then turned to look at me. His gaze was assessing. I didn't like it. Christ, I did not like it. There was nothing behind his looks to suggest that I was staring down an ancient, powerful intellect that came from a very alien perspective, but I knew it intellectually. It wasn't a good feeling.

"I am relieved to hear it," he said finally, and continued on.

"Not a fan of the Qun?"

His expression soured. "No." His voice was hard and repressive. It didn't exactly invite further discussion.

Riiiight. Wow, okay. I'd known he didn't like the ideas behind the Qun, but that was, uh, pretty final.

"You have a name, then," he suggested.

Between 'Prisoner' and 'Herald' I was beginning to wonder who'd be the first to actually, you know, ask.

I sort of figured it would be Varric, but only because my plan had been to avoid Solas as much as possible. Cassandra and Leliana were much more concerned with what I could do, not who I was, and I'd barely spoken to the others.

At least I was prepared for the question. I'd decided to remain Adaar because if I did have a background in this world there was a seriously high chance Leliana would find it. But first names? I'd already figured I might as well go with something I'd answer to in a pinch. "Toz Adaar."

His face didn't show anything at what must have been an extremely outlandish name. The combination of sounds wasn't terribly likely in any local language I could think of, and it sounded weird as fuck next to that Qunlat surname. I was pretty sure there were accents here that would actually render it Toss. Awkward, but inevitable.

It felt wrong for Thedas. The first time a character yelled 'TOZ!' over the heads of a crowd I'd probably die laughing - but I would answer to it automatically and naturally, and that could be really important in a dangerous situation.

Still, I couldn't help but hope most of them would end up calling me Adaar.

Finally we stood somewhere between Solas's cabin and Adan's apothecary. This early in the morning, the sun was just beginning to glow rosy around the edges of the horizon and people were rising. Smells of burned nug started to rise from the cooking fires around the tiny village. Stored food was scarce, but ugly little nugs were always free.

"What do you know about magic?" Solas asked abruptly.

I tilted my head. What did I know about magic? Cultural stuff, mostly - none of it was practical. The Avvar had shamans; the Dalish kicked out mages when there were too many in a clan; the Chantry believed spirits were the first children of the Maker; in Rivain possession was a given for a Seer. I didn't really know anything about using magic, just... random trivia about how different groups did it.

"Um," I said stupidly, still thinking. "I guess, just that magic comes from the Fade and we know mages are the people who can channel it to change things. Being able to connect to the Fade means that the spirits that live there can communicate with them. And... I guess that's why they're more prone to possession, because if you can't talk to somebody you probably can't convince them to let you possess them."

There were other things I knew, of course: about how blight magic used the taint instead of the connection to the Fade, about how some traditions of magic were forbidden by the Chantry, about how blood magic made it harder to connect to the Fade, about dreamers' greater sensitivity to spirits and demons, about how certain schools of magic were inaccessible outside the traditions and strictures of the cultures that spawned them...

But in the end, if you were asking me about, like, broad and practical magical knowledge instead of weirdly specific trivia? I was pretty limited to what I'd already said.

Solas did not look thrilled by the extent of my practical knowledge.

"Sorry," I said automatically.

"No. It is... some comfort... to know that there will be nothing to unlearn."

That was a double-edged comfort if ever I'd heard one. I rubbed my face with my hands. "Sorry," I muttered again.

He straightened. "Do not be sorry, be attentive. You have much to learn." His wording might have been pretty neutral, but his tone was flat.

His mood didn't actually improve over the course of the day.

I was absolutely, utterly, almost hilariously fucking terrible at magic.

I'd never really imagined what Solas's baffled expression might look like, but now I could imagine it really, really well. It was an oddly sweet face on him: brow furrowed, lips parted the tiniest bit. His eyes narrowed and went distant all at the same time, like there was some intense academic contemplation going on behind that pointy face.

"Your circumstances are unique. Perhaps your experience in the Fade is preventing you from using your magic normally," he mused. "You are certainly capable of accessing the Fade just as any normal mage would."

A pause.

"Try again."

I took a deep breath. The whole connection to the Fade business was itself dead easy, and it made everything sharp and bright and oddly intense. It was just that it didn't, well, do anything.

Solas wanted me to use and flex this magic like some kind of - of limb, perhaps. He seemed to expect it to feel like each twist of energy would be muscles contracting and ligaments shifting: difficult and complex at first, but soon second nature. That was... not at all what was happening.

We wasted hours.

Solas dragged me through experiment after experiment, saying things like: "Perhaps it is a matter of mentality," and "Perhaps the mark is interfering?"

And then he'd say: "Again." Again. Again. Again.

Finally, he stopped. He dug into a fold of his hobo tunic and pulled out a short knife, the kind for every day use. He handed it to me handle-first. "It may be that you are incapable of drawing from the Fade. Cut yourself."

I raised my eyebrows. "Are you sure-?"

"I am. I wish to see how you respond to magic whose source is different."

I hesitated. As far as I knew there was no psychoactive component of blood magic - it wasn't addictive in the way that lyrium was. It just... meant that using blood magic was easier. Practice. And there was no demon involved here, no unusual likelihood of possession.

"Okay," I said. Cutting skin hurts more the slower you go. I knew this, and went fast. Solas's knife was at least sharper than the average kitchen knife. I bled.

I bled, and it was powerful. I could feel it.

"Try," Solas said softly.

I did. A tiny spark lit up in my hands: a very small change, a little spark of light and electricity.

This was precisely what he'd been expecting the whole time he'd pushed me into different exercises for drawing magic from the Fade.

"Oh, that's easy!"

"Yes," he agreed, and then he reached forward and with one finger sealed the gash on my arm.

My spark went out.

"It would be unwise to allow others to see."

Oh. Yeah. Definitely yes. That. I imagined Cassandra's likely reaction and frowned. "Is that really the only way..?"

His eyes were distant. "I will need to consult some of my friends," he said finally. "For now, we have spent enough time. You should prepare to travel."

We were leaving in the morning, weren't we? I nodded, wiping my bloodied arm in the snow and then kicking it over.

I took Solas's advice and went to check with Harrit about my gear - he himself wasn't in, but Aniel was there, with her skin flushed and her auburn hair glowing like garnets in the firelight. She was doing - something that involved a bellows? - and I could see the flex of muscles in her arms and shoulders.

"Not yet," she warned when I showed up.

I shifted awkwardly. "Okay. It's just - Seeker Pentaghast wanted to move out tomorrow m-"

"Seeker Pentaghast has no patience and no appreciation for those of us who make her armour," she growled. Her hands were gloved, and she was wearing a thick leather apron, but there was nothing between her biceps and the fire but air and practice.

"Oh," I said. "Er, sorry."

She paused and let out a puff of breath to dislodge a sweaty piece of hair that had fallen across her face, and eyed me while she did so. "You're forgiven. You, personally. And when Seeker Pentaghast comes and apologises -"

"Sorry, just let me -"

She stilled, giving me the moment to reach around and tuck the loose hair back into the plait that kept the rest of it away.

"Thanks." She scowled unhappily at her heavily gloved hands. Then she looked up at me. "Are you just going to stand there and watch?"

I squinted and rocked back on my heels uncertainly. "Do you mean you want me to do something to help, or you want me to leave?" I asked carefully.

She made a frustrated noise and turned away, quickly busying herself with something else.

That was probably her wanting me to leave, then. I did it quietly, stage left.

I was going to have to go to the Hinterlands in the morning, but I couldn't use magic - not properly anyway, and even what I could, theoretically do, I would definitely avoid in front of Cassandra. God knew Varric wasn't going to take well to the whole idea of blood magic, either, friendship with Merrill aside.

That meant I'd be stuck defending myself with a stout cudgel and my wits, and... well, my wits weren't always the sharpest weapon around, figuratively speaking.

My habitual laziness was kind of overridden by how much I did not want to die out in the Hinterlands, and I went in search of someone who could tell me the first thing about hitting things really hard. Cassandra and Cullen would both be extremely busy, so I didn't even bother looking for them.

I contemplated the recruits Cullen was training, but it seemed obvious that they were meant to be part of an army, ready to form a shield wall at a moment's notice. I wasn't going to be part of an army - I was going to be engaged in weird scattered little skirmishes, mostly with backup but... often my backup would be distracted.

"See reason, Lysette!" Somebody was saying, and I turned to follow the voice. "We can't stay here..."

I'd forgotten about her. A templar recruit - which meant she was trained for hunting mages in small groups. We weren't hunting mages, but we'd be travelling in a small group and probably we'd have to use some of the same tactics...

"Sorry," I said, interrupting by waving my hand briefly between them. "Do you mind if I ask a question?"

"You," said Lysette, peering at me and completely ignoring the man she'd been talking to, "you're the one who stopped it getting any bigger." Her brows were permanently furrowed but her eyes and skin were clear, and her dark hair was pulled neatly away from her face.

"Mostly that was this thing," I admitted, wriggling my fingers at her around the ugly green glow of my palm.

She peered at it, frowning. I knew templars could sense magic, but I wondered what she felt from the mark.

"Um, so, you're a templar, right? Do you know anyone who can show me how to swing a club? They tell me I'm supposed to go into the Hinterlands tomorrow, and..."

She blinked. "Those hills are full of apostates," she said unhappily.

And templars, I thought, but I didn't correct her. She was biased, it was hardly a shock. "Yeah, that's... kind of the issue."

She looked me up and down for a second. "I use a maul," she said slowly. "You're bigger, the style will be... but..." She paused. "Yes. Go get your club. I'll show you a few basics... and hopefully Andraste will help you with the rest," she added, looking worried.

Lysette took her sudden job as The Teacher of The Herald of Andraste very, very seriously - she seemed to believe it would be her personal responsibility if I dropped dead somewhere in the Hinterlands tomorrow.

"We can't have the recruits see you making a fool of yourself," she insisted, dragging me out toward that one abandoned cabin where I'd read _Hard in Hightown_ yesterday. "It's terrible for morale."

I actually thought seeing me fall on my face a few times in the snow would probably raise morale significantly in its own way, but I didn't argue with her.

Once we were there, Lysette pointed out the disadvantages of something as slow and heavy as a club or a maul: basically, that while you were laying about yourself with huge, broad strokes, you were also vulnerable to somebody quick with something sharp - like, say, a rogue.

"There are lyrium smugglers out in those hills," she said, wrinkling her nose, "because the templars who defected still need lyrium, of course."

I might have sighed, but her instruction took place while I was hammering away at a tree, practising strokes she'd shown me as she called them out, and sighing took more breath thanI had. "Of course." Deep breath. "And you-?"

"No," she said, relief and dread warring in her voice. "I'd only just started taking it. There's not enough to go around without the Chantry infrastructure in place. I've stopped, and despite only recently beginning, the withdrawal was... very uncomfortable."

If that wasn't a good reason to stay away from lyrium, I didn't know what was. "That's lucky."

"For me, yes. For others..." Her face was grim. "Some of the older templars will suffer for the rest of their lives."

Yeah. Lyrium withdrawal could and did kill people. I was glad Cullen was past that danger. It would really suck if the commander dropped dead in the middle of a crisis.

"Drop your shoulder," Lysette said returning her attention to me. "That's it. It feels unnatural at first, but once you get into Harrit's gear you'll have the cop of your pauldron there; better to take blows on the strongest parts of your armour."

Of course, that was when I slipped and went tumbling in the snow.

I yelped. I lost my club and everything.

The snow was ...cold.

"Ow," I said, and staggered to my feet.

"...maybe we should take a break and talk about falling," Lysette said, watching me with her worried eyes while I stumbled over to pick up my club.

By the end of the day, I was nowhere near being ready to head out and do battle with hosts of demons. But on the other hand I was also less unready than I'd been that morning.

"I guess that's something," I said to Lysette when she let me go, bruised and slightly battered from the day's work.

She didn't look any _less_ worried, but she nodded gamely. "When you return we really need to practice more."

How encouraging.

Nevertheless, I said my goodbyes to Lysette and retreated back to the cabin I was beginning to think of as 'mine'. Nobody else had tried to claim it, at least. Once there I dug around, found a bucket, and melted some of the snow outside into a chilly watery slush.

It still had bits of ice floating in it, but I was sweating like a racehorse from the exercise with Lysette - scrubbing down with a strip of bed sheet and icy water was by no means pleasant, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been.

By the time I was done I was definitely not hot or sweaty any more. I dived for a blanket and curled up under it until the shivering stopped.

Then my stomach drove me out of cover and into the dusky evening to find food. Food was pretty much crispy nug - every meal. At least they were ubiquitous little bastards, I supposed: people wouldn't go hungry, even if they got mighty sick of eating them.

"Folks back in Orzammar, this stuff makes up most of their diet," Varric said conversationally when I'd brought it up. "Nugs and deep mushrooms, basically."

"Charming," I said, wrinkling my nose. I suspected it was an acquired taste, because they tasted somewhere between pork and rabbit, neither of which I really liked. I did wonder if we'd be able to get ram meat once we had camps set up in the Hinterlands - if we could, that probably meant we'd be able to get something like lamb or goat. I knew what to do with those, at the very least!

I paused. "Hey, Varric," I said thoughtfully, "Do you think you can eat dragon?"

"Tell you what, Herald: you kill one and I'll find out."

* * *

 

Armour was... weird. I knew only a little about the historical development of armour, but I was pretty sure Thedas had thrown what I knew completely out the window anyway. Heavy cavalry-style full plate apparently coexisted with lamellar coats, and some kinds of armour were created in absolutely bizarre colours.

When I stumbled away from my cabin at dawn, I saw a recruit with a pinkish sheen over his curiass. "Pretty, isn't it?" he grinned when he saw me looking.

"What _is_ that?" I asked, deciding he had not been offended by my staring.

"Dawnstone. Strong enough, if you treat it right," he shrugged.

I peered uncertainly at it.

"Don't worry," said Harrit, appearing from the forge. His facial hair looked like something had tried to nest in it overnight, but I supposed that could just as easily be its natural, ungroomed state. "You won't look like this peacock here. Away with you," he added, waving the recruit off.

The young man snapped a salute and took himself and his pretty armour off elsewhere - probably so Cullen could bellow him into shape, I suspected.

"If they bring me the materials, I'll make 'em whatever they like," Harrit said when I turned back to him. "Believe me, I wouldn't have picked something that'd paint a giant target on his back."

"Hey, he's an adult," I shrugged.

"He'll be a pretty adult corpse if he's not careful," Harrit grunted.

The armour he'd prepared for me turned out to be steel, thankfully. There was linen padding first, so that no part of the metal would rub me raw. The armour didn't require any part of it to go over my horns: instead, it was sort of slotted on sideways, with closures consisting of a weird combination of thick steel plates and leather thongs used to tighten the whole apparatus. This was overlapped by an odd combination of closely-woven mail and some of the broad, big plate armour that I mostly associated with European knights.

He explained as he went that different bits of armour needed to have greater freedom of movement, so while the plate mostly provided the necessary protection, the other stuff was there for joints and bendy bits.

I nodded along while he directed me into my armour like a field marshal.

"How's the fit, then?" he asked finally.

I shifted experimentally. My instinct was to say 'heavy' but that was pretty much a given.

"Fine, I think," I said after a moment. I pinwheeled one arm, trying to figure out how my range of movement was impacted. It was, I supposed, but not badly. "It doesn't seem like it pulls anywhere or puts more pressure someplace than another, not really."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Get going, then. If you run into any problems with it, let me know when you get back."

I nodded.

After my brief but thorough armour fitting I found Cassandra, Solas and Varric at what passed for the stables in Haven: a naked corral and a barn. The horses themselves were mostly not quality stock, but since we were dealing with a combination of donations and the beasts left by people who died at the Conclave, that wasn't much of a shock.

The horse Cassandra picked out came when she whistled, which I supposed meant it was hers. It was probably the pick of the lot, really: strong straight limbs, thick bones, neat hooves, sturdy and strong-looking with hefty shoulders and hindquarters. I doubted it was a comfortable ride, but it would probably carry her for years.

The others were a parade of symptoms of age: hard-mouthed, deaf, occasionally lame.

I was too big for most of them, and of the ones I could reasonably ride the pick was a slightly swaybacked old bastard who seemed like he'd have been better off as a plough horse. He was big, with a rough dappled coat and absurdly fluffy fetlocks that nearly hid his huge hooves. He had a chill temperament and seemed pretty sound but he was old enough that between the sheer weight of me as a rider and an indifferent-looking saddle, I was pretty sure he'd be grouchy as hell by the time we hit the Hinterlands.

It had been years since I'd been on a horse, and it felt weird but - not actually _that_ weird. Things I'd known once had come back quickly and easily, and I found myself cheerfully adjusting stirrups and checking that I could slide fingers between the horse's face and his throat lash. Finally, it seemed like they'd given me a task I could actually _do_.

He'd have been miles better off with somebody lighter, and I felt his sides heave out when I checked the girth and mounted him. "Sorry, baby," I said, patting his neck.

Varric had landed himself a thick-boned, small-headed pony with a killer temper: as soon as he made it into the saddle - none too steadily - she pinned back her ears and turned in circles like she was trying to gnaw his boot off, and once she had the bit clamped firmly between her teeth there was pretty much no stopping her.

Solas... was a giant elven stereotype, basically. Maybe he didn't dance naked in the moonlight or whatever, but he'd somehow sweet-talked a mean-tempered bay palfrey into politely arching her neck and carrying him at a genteel collected walk. Then, of course, the second he wasn't paying attention, she pinned her ears back at the pony, who rolled her eyes back and danced out of her way - and nearly collided with Cassandra's horse.

Cassandra's horse wasn't having any of this shit and nearly took a chunk out of the pony before we'd even gotten out the gates.

"Christ," I muttered. I knew there was a horsemaster out in the Hinterlands that we were supposed to talk to at some point. Considering that only one of us was remotely properly outfitted here, we should probably prioritise talking to him as soon as possible.

It was probably a good thing I hadn't picked one of the higher strung horses. Mine wasn't remotely fazed by the sheer social failure of the young whippersnappers he found himself surrounded by, and his only concession to the excitement was to flick his ears vaguely in their direction.

"You ride," Cassandra noted. She didn't look surprised that Solas clearly did.

"When there's a horse big enough," I agreed, internally thrilled that somebody'd noticed.

I looked around at the others. Solas was murmuring in the fluid language of the elves to his horse, who was shaking her head and stamping like the prima donna she clearly was. Varric looked distinctly displeased, even though his pony was more or less behaving herself.

It took me a moment, but I rapidly realised that he was, after all, a city dweller. There weren't actually many reasons he'd have had to get on a pony in his life, if what I knew about him was accurate.

I waited until Cassandra was on the path, impatient to move out, before I let my giant coldblood fall more or less into line with Varric's.

Cassandra and Varric had a weird relationship. On one level, I kind of shipped it; on another it seemed like they grated against each other something terrible. Cassandra's commitment to principle and Varric's unerring loyalty to his friends were frequently at odds due to circumstance even when they were on the same side. Like I said: weird.

"For whatever it's worth," I said when I was pretty sure she couldn't hear, "the guy who taught me how to ride used to say there were only three main rules: heels down, hands down, hang on."

"Nice alliteration," Varric said sourly. Then he heaved a grumpy sigh. "Thanks."

Well. Wasn't he a ray of sunshine. I let him be.

I had argued to have Varric along for his good cheer and easygoing nature, but in the end it turned out to be a long, mostly silent ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think most of the worldbuilding stuff is reasonably consistent with canon, but I'm aware not all of it is.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Our Hero deals quite poorly with stress.

The Hinterlands were a huge, sprawling swathe of southern Ferelden, filled with green hills and valleys, rocky outcroppings and burbling little waterways. There were ruined walls and fortresses dotted across the landscape, although one could only really tell which had fallen in the recent Blight and which were much older by looking closely - even so, some of the weathered structures were obviously Avvar, and one or two even seemed sort of elfy-looking.

I resolved not to ask Solas about those. Heaven help me if I was _wrong_.

We arrived at the camp set by Inquisition scouts in the mid-afternoon, saddle-sore and a little cranky. The only one of us who was used to such long riding was Cassandra, and she was vexed because - well, because of her nature, I suppose. But also because Varric's pony kept trying to tear pieces from her horse.

"From here, we go on foot," she declared, glowering, and swung her leg over the cantle to dismount.

Varric was clearly _not_ made for horseback riding, and when he got down he was distinctly wobbly. His pony, sensing him within chomping range, pinned back her ears and lunged for him.

...Varric had quick reflexes, at least.

I was feeling distinctly wibbly-wobbly around the thighs myself, and although I'd been expecting it I was still taken aback a little once I dismounted. My giant old horse heaved a sigh, blowing out his sides, and let his head droop.

"Aww," I cooed helplessly at him, rubbing his neck. He ignored me completely.

"Welcome to the Hinterlands," said a clear, young voice as we approached. A short figure waved cheerfully. When we got closer, we saw it was a young dwarf woman with an upturned little nose and a heap of reddish hair pulled back from her face. She had a friendly, open sort of demeanour, but she was also carrying a bow and a number of bladed weapons.

"Herald of Andraste," she said, addressing herself to me. "I've heard the stories. Everyone has. We all saw what you did at the Breach. Inquisition Scout Harding, at your service."

She was the _cutest_. Seriously, she was. "You have such a pretty face," I blurted, staring at her adorable freckles. Then I remembered I was a giant, horned man and I probably sounded like some kind of actual psychopath - or worse, like I was hitting on the poor woman. "Uh, I mean. Sorry. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"...Yeah," she said in the tone of a person who was not touching that one. "We should get to business. The situation out here's pretty dire."

With that, she launched in to a quick brief on the nature of our tasks in the area: that Mother Giselle wouldn't leave until the refugees were safe, using whatever respect people had for her as a cleric as leverage to make people pay attention - and since we were here, gearing up to go meet with her, I supposed it was paying off.

"We also came to secure horses from Redcliffe's old horsemaster," Harding went on, "but with the mage-templar fighting we haven't been able to get a message through."

I nodded, glancing at my mount, who had taken the opportunity of me standing still and not paying much attention to lazily crop grass. I rolled my eyes and went to unbridle him.

"We will leave the horses here," Cassandra said firmly, handing her own reins over to a surprised requisition officer, who'd just arrived carrying a slip of paper. She fumbled for the reins.

"A list of herbs and things to watch out for," Harding said, nodding at the paper. "We're thin on the ground for manpower, so if we can gather the resources the healers need while we're out here that's all for the better."

Elfroot and blood lotus were the primary things on the list, but there were other notes, too - to mark maps with logging stands and quarries, but also to pick up minerals if they seemed easy to get to.

I raised my eyebrows. "What, just, like. Pull iron from the ground? I thought you had to do a lot of... well, stuff... with, um, picks and things..." I trailed off, suddenly feeling very stupid. I had very little idea how 'rocks from the ground' turned themselves into armour or farming equipment.

I actually wasn't sure if my skin could flush, but if it could it probably was.

"The Hinterlands is littered with iron," Harding said, ignoring my humiliated pause like she hadn't even noticed it, bless her, "We can get natural iron ores here, which means that they're easy to turn into steel later. That's something you'll have to ask Harrit about, if you're interested in knowing more," she added, smiling. "I can't say it's really my area of expertise."

"Er, right. Yes. Anything else?"

She shook her head. "Just look out for those apostates."

Apostates, apostates. People were used to trusting the templars and it was obviously working in their favour. Nobody seemed too concerned about them. "The templars aren't causing you any trouble?" I asked, mostly to be difficult.

"Templars do not become abominations," Cassandra pointed out flatly.

I raised my eyes to her. No, they just became assholes. Assholes with swords. I couldn't help but feel like, once you were dead, it didn't much matter if it was an abomination or an angry nutjob with a sword who'd done it.

Still, better to nod and smile than argue with Cassandra.

"Right," I sighed.

She was one scary lady.

"This indicates that the Crossroads is not far from here," said Solas, who had taken the opportunity to examine the map pinned to the requisition officer's table.

Cassandra glanced at it and nodded. "We move out," she declared. Then she looked at me. "Be prepared for a fight at the Crossroads, Herald."

I cringed on the inside, but I had known it was coming.

We checked our packs, resupplied and headed off in the direction indicated by the maps. Along the way there were parts of ruined walls, little columns sticking straight up out of the ground. Affixed to the tops of these were shallow dishes lit with small fires. They seemed neither terribly sheltered nor well provisioned with fuel, but they burned anyway, sending little sparks drifting into the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.

I wondered who'd lit them and who'd be responsible if they set everything on fire.

"You know, I don't know that I'd recognise iron at all," I admitted, glancing at the others as we walked. _Stuff with picks and things_ , good god, had I really said that? I glanced sideways at Varric and hoped he wouldn't write that one down.

"Don't look at me," he protested, misinterpreting my glance entirely, "I'm a surface dwarf. If there was ever any truth to the 'Stone' stuff, it never made it up here to me."

"We are here to secure the Crossroads, close any rifts we can and find this horsemaster," Cassandra said repressively. "Not to mine iron."

"Yeah, I guess," I agreed, although I did rather think I'd be better at gathering resources than I would be at, you know, actually fighting.

She was right about one order of business: I was, unfortunately, the only person who was any good at all at closing rifts.

That was a ...worrying thought, really, wasn't it?

"Closing rifts will help stabilise the Veil," Solas pointed out. If he'd gotten stiff riding his mean-tempered palfrey all day, I couldn't tell from his walk. He was still barefoot, which was still damn weird. "It will make it safer for the scouts to collect whatever materials they require."

"That's true," I said, although I was quite sure I didn't sound too enthused.

The path down to the Crossroads was downhill, all pale green grass dotted with trees that might have been a kind of pine or cedar. Some of them were tall but others grew, stunted and struggling, in the cracks of the rocky slopes that rose to either side of us. A raven took flight from a ruined fence, drawing my eye to a slumped figure - one full of arrows, the ground near it rusty brown. It was one of several.

I paused.

Three templars, full armour. They smelled unpleasantly of roasting, like medium-rare meat cooked inside their steely shells. The mage had somebody's sword planted through her belly and a bright red smile slashed across her throat. Her face was lined, her her hair white. She looked _old_.

I had imagined the apostates as young and furious and mean, not... somebody's grandmother. Looking at her made me realise how absurd that was: old people could be just as furious and mean as anyone else, and it stood to reason that plenty would have thrown in their lot with what looked, at the time, like a revolution.

"Adaar."

I blinked at the strange word for a second before I realised Solas was talking to me - and that I'd stopped moving. "Yeah?"

"Come," said Solas. He didn't touch me, but he gestured like he might have, at another moment.

I took a deep breath, ignored the smell of cooked meat, and nodded. "Sorry."

"Don't be," muttered Varric darkly.

"We will see worse soon enough," Solas promised.

And that was why Varric kept calling him Chuckles. His _cheerful goddamn disposition_.

Cassandra didn't even glance backwards. "We are wasting daylight," she said in a voice that was neither sympathetic nor accusing: bland statement of fact.

The slope grew rocky for a space. It was an increasingly steep downhill slope, dry as anything, with bits of dirt and small rocks coming free beneath my boots. Balancing in full armour was... interesting. The weight was mostly uniform and I'd had some time to get used to it, but there were still odd moments where something didn't have quite the heft I was expecting. It was a lot more obvious on the more precarious footing.

It was fascinating to see Solas tense and quicken his pace almost a whole minute before we were in range of my own hearing - and then when I too registered the yelling, the stomping and crashing of metal and raised voices, it was still well before Cassandra or Varric seemed to hear it.

When they did, it was obvious, because Cassandra's head snapped up and her eyes moved toward the sounds as though she could see through all the obstacles in her way. She sped up. "Hurry."

Varric just unslung Bianca and ran his hands over her in a way that was probably a little too intimate to be witnessing.

I could _smell_ the fighting before I could see it: rusty blood, salt-sour sweat, dirt and the soft fleshy smell of new wounds, smoke and worse, thicker bodily things. I scrunched up my nose. Ew.

I heard a hoarse war cry, the horrible clash of steel. As the slopes flattened out and allowed us finally to see, there was an inquisition scout - green hood, golden eye - drawing back his bow from the cover of a tree.

"They're trying to protect the refugees," hissed Cassandra, breaking into a jog. "HOLD! WE ARE NOT APOSTATES," she called out, and that was when I realised that the people harassing our scouts were actually rogue templars.

Yeah, because the refugees and the scouts armed with bows and arrows were _clearly_ rebel mages. Goddammit.

Solas snarled, and said pretty much what I was feeling: "I do not think they care, Seeker!"

Cassandra made a frustrated noise, but she had to concede that truth.

"Maker _take_ you!" she cried, and that was apparently all the warning she would give: she charged forward at speed, bellowing a challenge to everybody before her.

Sunlight flamed on her armour. I'd swear I saw one of the templars look at her and, for a second, hesitate in horror at the sight: Cassandra barrelling toward him with bare steel in her hand and grim determination upon her face.

I didn't even blame him.

If Cassandra'd gone for me like that I'd have shit myself.

Solas threw up a barrier spell and dropped behind us, securing himself some place well out of the melee from which to attack.

I remembered at least one of Lysette's pieces of advice. I took a deep breath and - _Am I actually going to do this_? I thought wildly.

...and then I imagined the expression on Cassandra's face if I just stood twiddling my thumbs and let her fight alone.

Right.

 _Don't hesitate_. Lysette's advice.

One more deep breath.

I broke into a dead sprint, clutching my club with one white-knuckled hand. I was breathing hard and straining under the weight of my new armour by the time I reached one of the templars who was brushing off arrows from our scouts.

I smacked into the templar shoulder-first. He was fully armed and carrying a tall tower shield, but Lysette had been right: I was _big,_ and that meant that when I body-checked a human at high speed I could send them sprawling nine times out of ten.

Once down, he was like a turtle on its back. The armour that had protected him now hindered his movements. I could hear the rasp of something against metal and smell his gasping breath, hot and so close.

I gripped my club in both hands and gave an almighty heave, swinging it in a wide, enormous arc to gather momentum. Some ugly, effortful noise escaped me: "Hah!"

The impact was... amazing, strange, horrible.

The ground splintered and broke with a hellish sound, throwing bits of rock and dust into the air. The man between the ground and my heavy-headed club made a strangled, rasping noise. There was a dent in his armour, right over the burnished sword of the templar order, and his next breath was... wet.

A very human sound, that.

 _Don't hesitate_.

I kicked the shield arm viciously aside and brought my club down upon the throat. I didn't have the strength and momentum for the same kind of blow, but once he was on the ground it didn't much matter.

He was still breathing when I drew back, raspy and echoing in all his steel. So I did it again.

And again.

He did stop, eventually. There was a spray of something damp on my face, but, you know: whatever.

Then there was a sudden pain in my arm.

It was all the notification I received that I'd been _shot_.

"Shit!" I yelped. I glanced down at the crossbow bolt sticking out of one of my forearm and tried to think - bleeding, no, don't take it out; weak arm, muscles - major arteries? - half-formed thoughts and panic flashed through my mind and then-

-another one whizzed past my face.

_Holy fucking balls._

Right.

Murder first, then first aid.

I found the bolter - not that far, squinting over the sights of his weapon, heavy leather armour - and -

Frost chilled the air - I could feel it even from my distance. The bolter flinched, once, and then there was ice crawling up his armour, preventing movement, obstructive, thickening, creeping toward his face. He iced over and his chilly coating steamed in the air.

I knew this would give me the opportunity to charge, but just as I moved there was an enormous _crack_ and the ice shattered, taking a fairly vital chunk of the bolter with it.

He sagged and fell.

"Bianca, you minx! That was _beautiful_!" Varric's laughter rang through the Crossroads.

Was that what a critical hit looked like in real life? I blinked - Cassandra had taken care of her assailant, which meant three templars down.

There was a breath of silence, a second to catch our breaths. The Crossroads was in something like shock, but over it all I could hear somebody's baby crying. Something smelled of shit, but I couldn't tell how close it was. I breathed through my mouth.

Then the apostates came.

"We are not Templars," Solas tried with his voice ringing through the air, clear and audible through the sounds of fighting. "We mean you no harm!"

"Doesn't look like they're listening!" Varric said, leaping out of the way of an arrow. A woman with a sword lunged at him - she didn't seem to be a mage but she had the leverage and reach, and Varric couldn't fire with her taking swings at his face.

While she was focused on him, I came up behind her and caved her skull in with a blow from my club.

This one wasn't wearing a helmet of any kind. It was... messy.

"Nice," said Varric, and I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. I chose to ignore him, looking to see where the others were - and if there was anybody else with arrows or bolts waiting to shoot us. No. Not yet - but there was a mage, which would definitely be trouble.

Except it... wasn't. At all.

Cassandra did - _something_ \- to a spellbinder, and his magic dissipated like smoke on a breeze. Then she knocked him down with her shield and put her sword through his unprotected neck. It was almost delicate: a dip of her wrist, finesse rather than force. Its tip only needed to go a couple inches in to have him bleed out on the dirt right there.

"You with us, big guy?"

Varric. The whir- _snap_ of his mechanised crossbow brought me out of my staring and I blinked away.

Several more templars had arrived, apparently from nowhere, and joined the fray to the confusion of everyone.

Stupid. There wasn't exactly time for wool-gathering here.

"Yep," I said, between heavy breaths. By god I was tired, but there just wasn't _time_ to be tired.

I blinked again.

My club was slippery. Huh.

 _Don't hesitate_.

And then more fighting.

* * *

 

"That's the end of it," sighed Cassandra finally, wiping her bloodied sword upon the surcoat of a fallen templar. She looked down at his features impassively for a moment, and then made a soft, resigned noise.

"It is a waste," murmured Solas, leaning heavily upon his staff. He seemed just as tired as the rest of us, breathing harder with the crackle of - something - in the air around him. "Adaar," he added, sounding displeased, "show me your arm."

I blinked stupidly.

I was _dead tired_. This wasn't like fighting demons. Demons were stupid. They didn't cooperate. They didn't know how to use weak points in your armour. They didn't have training. It was like killing scary-strong animals. Fighting people was... different. Hard damn work.

My breath came back quickly - more quickly in this body, presumably because it was fitter. "What?" I said turning to Solas.

"Your arm," he repeated.

Oh.

"Oh," I said, remembering. The bolt had caught me on the forearm, on the outside and below my elbow. It wasn't in deep, but as soon as I looked at it, it stung like a bitch. "Wow, that went straight through the steel."

"A good crossbow fired at close range can go through heavy plate," Varric said, sounding much too cheerful. He twirled a bolt between his fingers. "These are what he was using," he informed Solas. "Doesn't look poisoned."

Poisoned. That was... well, yes, I supposed that was a possibility. I hadn't even thought of it. "Oh," I said vaguely. "Good."

Solas's expression was unreadable. "The head is only slightly flared," he said, inspecting the bolt Varric had brought. "We will cause less damage just-"

" _MOTHERFUCKER,_ " I shrieked.

"-pulling it out," he finished smugly.

"Oh my god, _fuck you._ " I yanked my hand away and clutched the injury protectively to my chest.

More than one person was laughing. Goddammit. _Hello, yes, I have never been fucking shot before_ , I wanted to snarl at them. Alright. Be cool, Toz.

 _Be cool_.

I flinched when Solas put his hand on my arm again.

 _Wow, so cool_.

He was utterly unsympathetic, but significantly gentler - hard to be _less gentle_ , really - when he passed a glowing hand over the injury.

"Will I ever be able to do that?" I asked, peering curiously at the soft glow.

"Doubtful. There are kinds of magic that will not lend themselves to healing."

By which he meant blood magic, I assumed, but wasn't stupid enough to say it. I supposed that made sense.

Once the injury was healed there was still no rest for the wicked - and therefore no rest for the Inquisition, either. Broken things had to be repurposed or at least gotten out of the way. One or two refugees had to be helped to find a new place to set up and bodies had to be searched for funds if nothing else - the Inquisition was hardly a well-funded, well-loved body, after all - and put aside where they'd be more or less out of the way. One scout had to be identified so her family could be notified of her death.

We all pitched in and had the camp returned to the vaguest semblance of order within the next half hour. There were other things to fix but for the most part the area was safe and, if not clean, at least not actually _obstructed_.

The wounded were set aside next to a still-standing house, where a few healers - or, at least mages with some small knack for it - were working to keep them relaxed and infection-free. Up there was where we found Mother Giselle.

She was a slender woman with dark-skin and a flat, upturned nose, a smattering of freckles and a pretty, if slightly thick, Orlesian accent. Her clothing was completely absurd, but then so were all of the vestments required by the chantry.

"There are mages here who can heal your wounds. Lie still," she was saying to one man as we approached.

"Are you going to talk to her?" I asked Cassandra quietly when she paused and didn't make any move to engage with her.

"It is not me she has asked to speak with," Cassandra pointed out.

"But you know what you're doing," I hissed.

She gave me an impassive expression.

God dammit.

"Er," I said, approaching Giselle carefully. "Are you Mother Giselle, then?"

She turned with a serene smile.

"I am. And you must be the one they're calling the Herald of Andraste." Her eyes were very dark, large and sweet. She was a pretty sort of woman, in her own way.

I winced. "Could we just... not? People are only calling me that because I can't seem to make them _stop doing it_."

Her smile turned a little sympathetic - but also a little amused, like I was some cute performing pet. Lovely. "We seldom have much say in our fate, I'm sad to say," she counselled, and gestured for me to walk with her.

Oh, how philosophical. I didn't roll my eyes, but it was an effort of will. There was a tiny voice in the back of my mind that said _religious people, seriously._ I tried to quash it, because not every religious person was automatically somebody I wouldn't get along with.

Hell, if we were counting, I even _liked_ Cassandra. Well. Sort of... - I admired her, anyway.

At any rate, I found myself holding my tongue. There were a lot of unkind things to say to Mother Giselle, and none of them would help me, or the Inquisition, much in the long run.

"Okay," I said, scratching my nose - my fingernails were long and black and sharp and they actually came away bloody. I must have been such a mess. "But you did ask me out here for something?"

She inclined her head, giving me an excellent angle from which to look down at her ridiculous red and white headdress. Hat. Wimple? _Thing._

"Yes. I know of the Chantry's denouncement and I am... familiar," a pause like a damnation, "with those behind it. I won't lie to you: Some are grandstanding, hoping to increase their chances of being the new divine. Some are simply terrified. So many good people, senselessly taken from us..."

I sighed. "Look, that's... I'm not understating how much of a tragedy this has been, especially for your religious organisation," I said as though my careful preface would make what I was about to say somehow less offensive: "But they're not actually helping anyone and "we're scared" is a piss poor excuse for making all this shit harder to fix."

There were a lot of other things I could have said

She didn't look upset by my profanity or my criticism. "They don't know that - this is my point. Go to them. Convince the remaining clerics you're not a demon to be feared. They have heard only frightful tales of you. Give them something else to believe."

"Go to them? Mother Giselle," I rubbed my horn. (How was there even blood on my horn? It was taller than all of the people I'd been fighting? Good god.) "They want to kill me. They want to blame me for the Divine's death and execute me. I have no intention of _going to them_."

I knew it had been part of the 'plot' of the game, but I was holding out hope that we could send a more appropriate representative. Someone charismatic. Someone known. Someone who was religious in their own right. Someone with the skills to woo a huge audience.

So basically: _Leliana._

Or Cassandra, maybe, although she was a little low on charisma. Maybe we could organise for her to kill a dragon in front of the crowd.

Anyway: definitely not me.

"No." Giselle shook her head. "You are no longer alone. They cannot imprison or attack you."

Ugh. "Are you - okay, you're actually serious. Dude, if I get an audience with the remaining clerics, it's going to be in Val Royeaux, right?" I pointed out. "They may have shit all templars left, but there are plenty of chevalliers who will fight for the chur - uh, the Chantry. They most certainly _can_ attack me, and we, the Inquisition, would lose good people defending me."

She pursed her lips, glancing at me as though I was the one being recalcitrant or stupid, which I did _not_ appreciate. My points were _valid._ Also? My arm hurt. I rubbed at it, but Solas had done just fine healing it, and the scar was firm and pretty normal-feeling. Psychosomatic, maybe.

Mother Giselle sighed. "Let me put it this way: you needn't convince them all. Their power is in their unified voice. Take that from them, and you receive the time you need."

I rubbed one hand between my horns. "Sure. That's -" I stopped and tried very hard not to say something rude. She'd tried. She wanted to help. If I could be civil to Roderick I could be civil to Giselle.

No. Come on. I steeled myself.

"Thank you," I said politely, through my teeth.

"I honestly don't know if you've been touched by fate or sent to help us, but... I have hope."

 _Well, hooray for you, lady,_ I thought acidly. Hope must have been pretty damn comforting when it was all that was likely to be required of her.

"Hope is what we need now," she went on blithely. "The people will listen to your rallying call. You could build the inquisition into a force that will deliver us, or destroy us all."

She paused here, thoughtful and serene, looking up at me.

I was very aware that I was exhausted, cranky, itchy with other people's blood and aching all over.

She smiled at me, though, warm and sincere.

"I will go to Haven and provide Leliana with the names. It's not much, but I will do what I can."

I took a deep breath and tried my best to smile back. "That's all anyone could ask," I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.

When she finally left I found myself hoping I'd never have to see her again. Ever. _Ever_.

I looked out at the Crossroads. Somebody had set a fire and begun burning the bodies, and the smell of burning hair and greasy smoke was already getting to me. I knew that in that pile were people I'd killed on my own.

I didn't feel anything about that except for an odd curiosity. I didn't have the space in my skull for feeling anything in particular.

"Fuck this," I muttered. I wanted to stalk off, away, out into the wilderness of the unclaimed Hinterlands: no questions, no commentary, no _people_.

I _did_ know better than to go off alone into a demon-infested countryside, though. Unfortunately.

There was a house, disused, that reeked of blood and old injuries and something like aging meat. It had obviously been used as a makeshift hospital for the refugees, and just as obviously nobody wanted to clean it - probably because it stank.

I went inside and closed the door.

Then I sank down and rested my spine against the wood of it. I bent at the knees and propped my elbows upon them. At least the only people in here were already dead, and wouldn't be causing me much stress any time soon.

 _Stop the world spinning,_ I thought miserably, leaning forward and letting my head droop. _I want to get off._

This whole stupid Herald business was proving even harder than I'd anticipated.


	10. Chapter 10

You'd think sitting on the stained floor of a derelict house strewn with bodies and reeking of blood and shit would be unpleasant - and you'd be pretty much right. It was totally unpleasant.

The alternative was going outside, and, just... ugh. No.

There were people everywhere, and when we left I'd be travelling with people, and then when we camped I'd be _with people_ , and all I could think of was the heavy, oppressive sense of them. Looking, commenting, breathing, shifting - it wouldn't matter if they were loud or quiet, dour or cheerful. They'd just _be there_. Inescapably, gratingly, exhaustingly _there_.

I already wanted them to just go away for a few hours, and we'd hardly started. That did not bode well. If my mood kept up in this direction there was a good chance I'd round on somebody and scream 'Piss off! I don't care!' at the top of my lungs and shake them until they left or killed me. One or the other.

There was a soft thump on the door, ominously like somebody leaning on it. God dammit.

"So," drawled Varric's voice through the wood, "making nice with the cadavers?"

Of course they sent Varric to get me.

That, in itself, was not surprising. Cassandra's persuasive skills were limited to 'looking stern' and 'actual violence', and I'd told Solas to fuck off not twenty minutes ago. Varric was the obvious choice.

"Are you telling me Cassandra can't handle giving me like _five fucking minutes_ on my own?" I snapped.

"Well, stories that start with 'the holy prophet of Andraste had locked himself in a dark room with a bunch of dead bodies' don't usually end up anywhere good," he pointed out mildly.

"The 'holy prophet of Andraste'," I said sarcastically, "is avoiding the Andrastians for a few minutes." It wasn't really the truth, but... well, suddenly being expected to be able to do all this stuff was a definite compounding factor. Mother Giselle certainly hadn't helped, either.

There was a pause.

"Ah, shit," muttered Varric. I could hear him slide down the door, followed by another soft thump when he leaned back against the wood on the other side.

He was silent for a few long minutes, and I used that time to do some breathing exercises. Corny, but true. I had a deep appreciation for the value of breathing exercises, when one was properly committed to them. In with the rank air, through the nose, out through the mouth, emphasis on the outward breath. There was something about dragging out the outward breath like that which slowed the heart, lowered the blood pressure a little. It eased the physical markers of stress... temporarily, of course.

Having Varric right there wasn't the same as being on my own - I could hear him breathing and feel a dull warmth through the old, cracked wood. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I appreciated both the silence and the barrier. My headache didn't ease, and there was still an odd throb in my wrist and my muscles were overworked, but I felt marginally better anyway.

"Cassandra's out of earshot," he said eventually, just as I was really falling into the breathing thing. "She and Solas went to talk to a Corporal Vale about the area. If you want to talk about it -"

"No."

I sighed and stood up before pulling open the door. Varric's quick reflexes saved him again, and he was on his feet only a moment after I was. Pity, it might have been funny to see him fall backwards once the door's support was gone. But then there'd be teasing or sour faces or something and... nah, too much effort just to see someone fall over. I cracked a yawn.

"Let's just get going."

I stepped down from the little house - really, it was one step away from a makeshift charnel-house, and the fresh air tasted pretty good after even a few minutes in there - and scratched the base of my horns, peering around at the Crossroads. There was an old monument of Avaar make across from me, presiding over a tiny pond, and beyond that, an elf arguing with somebody.

That was right, I thought bleakly, the Crossroads was a dilapidated refugee camp and all sorts of resources were scarce. There were ways to help that, if I remembered right. Little quests, easily undertaken...

If I listened, I could hear the telltale grumbling of that hunter complaining about food, although the words were garbled to my ears. "- _emplars, bandits, demons_ ," he was muttering to himself.

That was something I was noticing more and more in the field, actually: sounds that should have been too distant for hearing were audible, but they arrived in a way that made the actual words harder to pick out. There were tonal qualities in the voices here that I'd attributed to some kind of - of accent, I suppose - but which now seemed a bit too universal. A different range of sound, maybe? Weird.

We were rejoined by Cassandra and Solas, both of whom shot me capital-L Looks but neither of whom actually demanded answers. "They have been unable to contact Master Dennet, and the King's road is overrun with mages and templars fighting," Cassandra said immediately. "Corporal Vale has some ideas about where the groups may be camped, but little solid evidence."

I nodded. I knew there were things that needed to be done out in the Hinterlands - the mounts for the Inquisition were an important one, but...

"This place is a mess," I declared, gesturing around the Crossroads.

"The whole Hinterlands is a mess," Cassandra said grimly, looking around.

"Reminds me of Kirkwall during the Blight," Varric muttered, scuffing the dirt with the toe of his boot. "Too many refugees."

Solas was silent, but his expression was grave.

Corporal Vale was the young man who'd been organising the supply, support and security efforts in the Hinterlands on behalf of the Inquisition. He looked harried, tired- and determined.

He had a laundry list of things we could do to help.

Cassandra pursed her lips. "That is ...not entirely within the purview of our purpose here," she said, but she sounded unhappy even as she said it, looking out in the direction of the Crossroads. It was hidden from Vale's perch by rock and trees, but the irritating baying of that one screaming baby was still audible.

I frowned. Technically she was correct, but... I looked sideways at Varric, who looked about as happy as I was. I felt as though I'd used up all my diplomacy skills on Giselle and there as nothing left for anybody else.

"No. _No_. For fuck's sakes, _no_. If the Inquisition's purpose isn't to help people like that, then, basically: _fuck_ the Inquisition's purpose. There's no point saving anyone from demons just to let them starve!" I growled with more heat and temper than she really deserved.

Corporal Vale flinched. Probably because I was huge and I'd forgotten I didn't have to get in people's faces to be heard. Again. Fucking Vashoth body.

Cassandra's eyes narrowed right back at me. "I am not suggesting we should allow anybody to _starve_ ," she said, reproachful and clearly taken aback by my vehemence. "Simply that we must have priorities. We cannot help everybody and the rifts cannot be ignored. _We_ must deal with them."

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I met Cassandra's eyes, and her gaze was hard. There was a hell of a temper behind her clipped explanation, and I knew I had one to match, when I was frustrated or stressed enough. I held it for a moment, and felt inexplicably steadied by her certainty.

She was right in that we couldn't go racing off into the wilderness to run errands for the refugees while there were holes in the world vomiting up demons. Plenty of other soldiers could be relied upon to locate certain supplies - we were the only group who would be able to close rifts.

It... grated.

Okay, I'd over-reacted.

"Fine," I said flatly.

There was a pause. It was awkward.

Somewhere next to me I could hear Varric shifting uncomfortably on his feet but I didn't look at him.

"The Corporal mentioned a hunter at the Crossroads with some ideas," Solas said serenely. He effortlessly turned our attention back to the Inquisition soldier, who didn't look entirely thrilled to be the focus of our combined attention.

"Er," said Vale. "Yes... one of the refugees..." he cleared his throat, swallowed, and then did his level best to be more or less professional as he detailed the ways in which we could help the Hinterland refugees.

Some of them were, as Cassandra suggested, not really tenable. Maybe they would have been, had this actually been a video game, but now? Here? We could hardly afford to run all over the map locating apostate caches, for example. Not while every moment a rift remained open was potentially another life. We had to ration our time sensibly.

Still, some things were easy enough to do. Nobody wanted to go out and forage for herbs, so when we passed those spiky green elfroot plants we collected the darkest leaves, leaving the younger and smaller ones flat to the sunlight.

"It allows them to continue taking in sunlight and growing," Solas explained confidently, snapping a green stem with a practised twist. "Which in turn means there will be elfroot next season."

"Right," I said, frowning carefully, and copied him precisely.

We stopped several times to close Fade rifts, which meant fighting, fighting, and, for a little change of pace: more fighting.

Fighting was confusing, though. A rift meant crackling green light and spell fire, wraiths that darted nimbly out of the way of my swings, terrors that had mastered some hideous form of Fade step and delighted in bursting out of the ground at our feet.

I became way too used to the scream of terrors and the crackle of a rift, the splatter- _thump_ that came when I broke the head of a shade. There was a particularly unpleasant sound that I began associate with a fleshy spatter of - well, of whatever passed for blood among demons. It smelled rank, and certainly not like blood.

Despite all that, it was easier to fight demons.

Demons were usually confused - crossing over from the Fade left them with something like a very profound culture shock. Except instead of culture shock, it was more like 'reality shock'. And beyond that, they were mostly very unskilled at working together, as though cooperation was as foreign a concept to them as time and space. All in all, the demons tended to be less skilled and more bewildered than templars or apostates.

There was also much less 'blood' when I bashed a terror's head in than when I killed a person, and _none_ of them were armed with crossbows - and when the wraiths spat magic at me, it rarely went through my armour. All in all, I could easily say I preferred fighting demons to people.

I was nearly stumbling after the third rift, though. There was a definite scent of demon innards about me, and the linen padding beneath my armour was soaked through with sour sweat. My muscles hurt. There was grime on my face. And I was _tired._

Dear god, was I tired.

"This would be a good place to camp," Solas said, finally, when it seemed to me that it was almost too dark to set up camp at all. It wasn't, of course - even with the light fading and most of us exhausted, we had it set up in record time. Even Varric and I, both of whom sucked at this whole 'outdoors' business, made a valiant effort to be useful.

There was a running stream nearby with clean, fresh water, and our camp was settled upon a reasonably protected plateau - the backs of our tents were to a rocky face, and anything that did wish us harm would have to either make that unpleasant drop or run at us uphill. We put up the tents with some difficulty, dug a fire pit and lined it with some kind of rock that didn't burn easily (I confess, I had no idea what made Cassandra discard some rocks and not others), and made the exhausted effort to throw down bedrolls.

I was by that point so heartily sick of my companions that I actually volunteered to dig the latrine pit, just to get out from under their attention for ten minutes. By nature, it had to be slightly more distant from the camp - not much, but enough not to upset everybody with its reek or contaminate anything, basically. At this point I'd take whatever I could get.

"Be my guest," said Varric. Solas watched me warily, but said nothing, and if Cassandra was even paying attention I certainly couldn't tell.

My muscles were wobbly and strained, and just about ready to revolt completely for the day. Still, one of the magnificent benefits of being a goddamn giant was that a single exhausted Vashoth was still hell on wheels in the muscle department. Maybe the body itself wasn't what I was used to - penis, horns, glowing hand, whole feet taller than expected, you know, _all kind of weird_ \- but there was something comforting about the sheer physical strength of it. I felt... safe, I suppose. Safe, comfortable in my skin in a way I wasn't really used to.

And, look, I could still do without the penis and testicles, yeah. But I wasn't really missing the boobs, either.

...It was a weird thought, and one I was pretty much determined not to focus too hard upon.

I lingered even after I was done and closed my eyes. There were no birds, not anymore, but I could hear the scratching of small things in the trees, of little paws - that was a a fox, heading for its den at the edge of night, surely - and of bats higher in the canopies, restless in the dark.

I sighed deeply. I knew Cassandra was annoyed at me. She probably had every right to be, since I'd sworn and yelled at her earlier for no really adequate reason. I'd snapped at her because I was feeling bad, basically.

I considered letting it go, ignoring it and letting any lingering tension sort itself out. I certainly had no desire to apologise, and to say I felt sorry would have been to imply I had room for more feelings than 'tired' and 'faintly peeved' right then. That just wasn't true.

On the other hand, Cassandra struck me as the sort of person who could hold onto the memory of a slight forever. Even when she got over it, she'd never really forget it. And my rudeness was likely to set a poor precedent for any future interactions...

Our future interactions were likely to be fraught enough. Atheist Vashoth, meet Seeker of Truth. God.

Finally I made a disgusted noise and turned on my heel to head back to the camp. It was only one more thing to do before sleep. _Come on, Toz._

I moved with determined steps, sharp enough that Varric and Solas both looked up.

"Cassandra," I said shortly, once I was in the circle of firelight with the others again. She looked up from her seat on the dirt next to the fire, where she was unbuckling her greaves.

"Herald," she acknowledged coolly. I was determined to ignore that title - for now.

I ground my teeth. I never did apologise with any grace, and, honestly, doing it made me feel anxious, humiliated and a bit queasy. "I was rude to you earlier, and I should not have been. I apologise. I'll try not to do it again."

Cassandra gave me a long, measured look. Then, after a moment, she nodded. It had an air of great finality about it, thank god.

There was a short, slightly awkward pause.

"I will take first watch," Cassandra informed me. I relaxed.

Solas, it turned out, had already called the final watch of the night - the two and a bit hours before dawn.

I wrinkled my nose. "Can I go after, then?"

Varric seemed to feel that it didn't matter which absurd part of the night his sleep would be interrupted for - if it wasn't first or last, it was all the same to him - and so I got the second watch shift.

"Great," I muttered, and I crawled into one of the tents to take nap for a few hours before my shift. Since I was completely exhausted, I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down.

Three minutes later, Cassandra woke me by shaking my shoulder.

Well, no. It was more like two hours, but by god it felt like way, way less time had actually passed. I pried my eyes open and staggered out into the flickering light of the fire in her wake.

It was properly dark now, sky velvety and dark and dotted with stars like glittering diamonds. They were all unfamiliar.

The fire gave the occasional crackle or hiss, but otherwise the camp was silent. I thought I could hear a dim snore from Varric, but tent walls did nothing to stop sound from travelling.

"Hngh," I informed Cassandra.

Her lips twitched into what might have grown up to be a smile if she hadn't smothered it. "Middle watches are difficult," she agreed, and, awkwardly, she handed me a tin cup. Its handle was warm, but the cup itself was very hot.

It smelled extremely familiar: coffee.

Campfire coffee was an... experience, shall we say... but it would keep me awake for a little while.

"Thank you," I said, with deep and genuine feeling.

Cassandra gave me a pensive look. "I suppose I should not be surprised that you would think I was so unkind. That you would assume the worst of me is..." she paused, and there were a lot of things unspoken in that pause. "Expected," she said finally.

"No," I said, sighing. "You're very obviously not the sort of person who'd let people right in front of you go hungry if you could do something about it." She thought I'd murdered the pope and hadn't even let me get scratched by those demons out at the temple, after all. "And you were right about the other stuff not being things we can do right now. Priorities and all."

She lowered her eyes briefly, then nodded.

"You are not what I expected," she admitted, but whether that was a good or a bad thing she didn't say. Instead she went to bed.

I walked a careful perimeter and kept a wary eye out, but it was a long and quiet night. I mostly spent my watch counting minutes, second by second, inside my head. At least I knew I'd be waking Varric up precisely on time.

Unfortunately, the downside of such a quiet watch shift was that it gave me time to think. Time to think was the last thing I needed right now.

Okay. Okay, so, I was the Herald of Andraste.

You'd think I'd've been done panicking about that but _wow how wrong you would be_.

In the end, the how and why of it didn't actually matter that much. The fact remained that _I_ was the one with the Dread Wolf's magic stuck in my hand and therefore I was the one who could close the rifts. That was basically all there was to it.

Sure, I could have said 'no' and pissed right off to Rivain or something, but to what point or purpose? I had nowhere to go, knew nobody, and was in the thrilling position of being a Vashoth. In a lot of places, I'd be about as welcome as gonorrhoea.

On the other hand, I keenly, keenly felt the sense of being an imposter. I had no idea what I was doing, not really, but there were pieces of this place - as a _game_ \- lodged in my skull, ideas of what was to come, nebulous future plans, thoughts, ideas. None of them were certain. I wasn't certain. What I was, was anxious. Anxious and tired.

I made a valiant attempt at providing a new cup of coffee and woke Varric for his shift, creeping past Solas's silent, deep-breathing body to prod Varric gently.

"Nothing interesting at all," I admitted once he'd followed me grumpily into the firelight. "A fennec came to inspect the fire and then left."

"Riveting," he mumbled, and grabbed for the coffee.

He drank it like it wasn't close to boiling, and squinted up at me. "You look like shit," he decided. "Still thinking about killing those templars?"

Templars? Oh. Them. Killing actual people bothered me intellectually - I had an ideological commitment to peace, after all. But on a gut-deep, emotional level it didn't feel like much of anything. I frowned. "Not really."

"Huh."

He stared at me for a moment. Eventually, I relented with a sigh. "Right now I'd just feel a lot better if somebody else, anybody else really, had the ability to close the damn rifts." It was hardly the full list of my grievances, but it was right up there with the scarier parts.

"Yeah, I... can understand that." Varric had no answers, not really.

In the end, I waved off his sleepy platitudes and headed back to the tent we'd so painstakingly pitched.

My tent was shared with Cassandra, presumably because Solas was not going to be doing magical Fade dreaming next to the Seeker and she and Varric would tear strips off one another just existing in that enclosed space.

Once I ducked under the tent flap, the light from outside was muted and I could hear Cassandra's soft breathing. I did my best to be quiet crawling back under the blanket.

Sleep was hard to find - unsurprising, since sleep was often hard to find forme - and I laid still and quiet, listening to the small noises of the Hinterlands at night and the tread of Varric's pacing.

I thought about Haven, about the Breach and the endless list of things we ought to accomplish tomorrow. I had hopes we'd close more of the rifts, kill more demons, and maybe secure the food the refugees needed at the Crossroads - all on the way to Dennet's farms. There was a sense that this pause was pointless, a restless wish to just get up and _do it_.

I was, predictably, still awake when Varric traded off with Solas. Ugh.

I got another half hour or so of sleep in the end, and woke with a groan when Cassandra prodded my shoulder. "Piss off," I muttered, smacking her hand, and wriggled away.

She smacked my hand right back, a little strike intended to sting and surprise rather than actually hurt - rather like disciplining a naughty puppy. But she did leave me alone. I blinked stupidly at the ceiling. The dawn light was ruddy through the oiled fabric of our tent. The ground beneath me remained hard and cold, but compared to getting up it was downright welcoming.

I lay there for a few moments, gritty-eyed and feeling dirty, and contemplated the exhausting day ahead. I hadn't thought I'd miss Haven - Roderick, staring eyes, suspicious glances at my horns amid worshipful mutters, Seggrit's rude commentary, good _god_ \- but...

...I missed Haven.

An empty room with a fireplace and a bucket of water to bathe with seemed like the height of luxury right now, and wasn't that tragic?

After another moment I hauled myself to my knees, peeled my bedroll away from where it was hooked on my horns, and managed to jam my toes back into my boots. They were even the right ones!

My mood, already sour, plummeted when I stepped out of the tent because of course the first thing I saw was the Breach coiled high in the sky. It made a sound I couldn't quite characterise: something like a crackle-hiss, like something awful underneath a rumble of thunder. In the early dawn, there wasn't a lot of warmth in the light - so everything took on a greenish cast from that thing.

I scowled up at it, squinting against the brightness of the overcast sky. "Ugh," I said, with feeling.

Cassandra looked up, followed my gaze, and made an answering disgusted noise in what I could only assume was solidarity.

Breakfast was travellers' rations, which meant... _more fucking nug_. This nug was salted, which was, in its way, almost a change of pace.

"We should take some of the ram meat back with us, too," I said, peering at the preserved meat without much enthusiasm. "It's not too far, right? At least I know how to cook ram meat..." Provided it was at all like the mutton I was familiar with, anyway. I suspected it probably was, though. Maybe a little more like goat? Something in between? I'd cooked with both, I was sure I could make something out of it.

"You cook," Varric said, looking up from his cup of horrible sludgy coffee briefly. " _You_."

"...yes?" I said, frowning.

Varric's face was shadowed from a rough night's sleep, but his eyes lit up. He looked as though he'd just discovered something that opened up worlds of possibility for him. "Don't know if the readers will really go for that. The huge horned qunari, trussed up in an apron, tied with a bow-" he cut himself off, grinning.

I snorted, finally taking a bite of the salted nug. It tasted about as good as I'd expected. I contemplated telling Varric that, excuse him, that was adorable - _I_ was adorable! - but I decided against it. I was too tired and, honestly, the sooner we got to Dennet's the better.

We broke camp.

My muscles were sore when we began walking again - shoulders, chest, back, belly: all the places where I'd been tensed and supporting my weight while heaving my huge club around. It was more or less a given, I supposed, but I couldn't help but wonder if Varric or Solas felt remotely tender. Cassandra, I was betting, did not. Too much practice.

We found another two rifts on the way to Redcliff Farms, following Scout Harding's rough but reasonably thorough map. That was enough time and fighting to make us fall into a pattern of familiarity: I didn't flinch when Solas's barrier washed over me, and Varric grew increasingly proficient at picking out the weak points of frozen rage demons and causing them to shatter.

Cassandra was fierce and fearless, and she gave me the distinct impression that we could have just sent her out here all on her own. She'd probably have made better time, honestly.

We caught sight of druffalo at around noon. "Pretty sure that's it," I said, pointing.

"Yes," Solas agreed. "I believe the scouts have marked a location for an outpost nearby."

I peered over his shoulder - easy, given my height and his lack thereof - at the map he'd pulled from a pack. "That way," I said, pointing northeast.

Solas eyed the map for a second before nodding. "I believe so."

We went there first, finding that some helpful scout had left the makings of a rudimentary camp wrapped in oilcloth and tucked behind a rock.

"It's a good spot," Cassandra declared, looking from the rise of the hill shadowing the location to the shallow, clear water burbling along beside it. There was elfroot and spindleweed in abundance, which supposedly meant a relatively healthy body of water.

We ended up doing the menial work of setting the campsite up in its most basic form: two tents, significantly sturdier than the rough ones we were carrying and proportionally more difficult to set up, a fire pit and a latrine ditch.

"It will make a good base of operations in this area. We will need to hold the Hinterlands whether or not we can persuade Dennet to provide our mounts," Cassandra said practically, hammering in a peg with a large rock. "And there are several rifts nearby that will need closing," she added.

There was a green haze not that far away that proved her right. It was just close enough to make my palm tingle unpleasantly. "We should take care of that one first," I said, scowling at it.

"We may as well." Solas sounded about as enthused as I felt, which was to say: not at all. "There is wisdom in getting it out of the way, at least."

"Pretty much."

"That's how you know we're in trouble," Varric muttered. "The demons are getting boring."

Cassandra rolled her eyes at this comment, but we did end up closing the rift on the farm proper before going in to see Dennet. It was just good sense: we didn't need terrors picking their way across the farm, terrifying druffalo while we were trying to negotiate.

Dennet, when we got to him, was certainly over fifty - but nothing about him felt old. He had a sense of old leather and deep roots about him: earthy, hard-wearing and tough as nails.

"I hear your Inquisition's looking for mounts," he said by way of greeting when we showed up on his doorstep.

I supposed it was obvious why we were there and who we represented. Even aside from the giant hairy eyeball on Cassandra's cuirass, we were an incredibly mixed group, we were travelling across the countryside in the middle of the vicious mage-templar war, and, tellingly, we probably smelled like that rank demon blood.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed, squaring her shoulders. "Can you help us?"

"No," said Dennet. He crossed his arms.

Cassandra's jaw tightened when she clenched her teeth. It was basically how you could tell her 'pissed off' expression from her normal one.

"I can't just give you a herd of the finest horses in Ferelden. If I did just pack them up and send them, every bandit between here and Haven would be on them before they even made it out of the Hinterlands. You can have your mounts when I know that they won't end up as a cold winter's breakfast."

I clicked my tongue. That was right, Dennet was supposed to withhold the deal with the Inquisition until they'd - we'd - sorted out a bunch of watch towers and killed some wolves, wasn't he?

"You want us to secure the area before you sell them?" I prompted, cracking a yawn. Hey, I couldn't help it: I'd been fighting demons all day and I'd slept badly, even for me. That was a lot of reason to yawn.

"You can talk to my wife Elaina," Dennet said, and if he hadn't been such a grim-faced bastard I'd have sworn there was a flicker of a smile there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, if there was something you liked in this chapter, let me know in the comments. :)


	11. Chapter 11

We found Dennet’s wife in the garden nearest his house. It was a small one, fenced in with a ragged scarecrow in the centre. This garden seemed to be used for growing useful herbs and vegetables, rather than the sprawling fields occupied by the druffalo. That was probably why it was fenced in, as well -- no doubt the druffalo would eat vegetables just as happily as grass and hay. I could see elfroot and embrium, but also some other, more familiar plants, like poppies, sage and st john’s wort. There were rows of salad greens and leeks, an apple tree just outside the fence and four huge pumpkins tumbled together against a fence post. They were huge and orange, rather than the grey or green skinned varieties I was used to. 

“I heard what my man said,” was the first thing Elaina said to us, standing with her feet planted and her mouth in a grim line. She was a small, pale person wearing heavy boots and a chain tunic, and there was a large knife sheathed across the back of her hips. Sure, her farmers had all been sent home to keep them from the wolves, but Elaina was plainly not going anywhere. The people out here were tough, and she obviously considered herself tougher than most of them. 

Her problem was as straightforward as it was a pain in the butt: wolves, driven mad or possessed, were making nuisances of themselves for the farm workers. We were to find them and kill them so the workers (the ones more squeamish than Elaina, anyway) could return to Redcliffe Farm. 

“And the other thing?” I prompted, frowning. “Dennet said something about bandits or... something?”

Elaina nodded. “The boy’s got some ideas for look outs.” She gestured down the hill toward a stout little building. At the front, a broad-shouldered young man with a brutish face was sharpening an axe. 

We had a brief chat to him, too, and continued on our merry way up into the hills surrounding the fertile valley that was Redcliffe Farm.

“Watchtowers,” Cassandra muttered as we went.

Varric looked equally unhappy with the suggestion. “It’d probably be too much to hope they want to build them themselves,” he mused.

I puffed out my cheeks and blew out a breath. “You saw our mounts,” I pointed out. I wasn’t looking at Varric so much -- he obviously had no eye for horses. 

Cassandra, though, looked very sour indeed. “I did,” she agreed, and didn’t protest any further. 

There wasn’t that much point in complaining anyway. The watchtowers were a poorly timed request, but I didn’t think they were actually a bad one. And if Dennet was going to help arm the refugees... 

It would still be a pain in the butt, though. At least he’d marked the places he wanted on the map for us -- now we just had to check them out to make sure they weren’t stupid places, then mark them for builders. That would be easier than finding spots ourselves.

“The wolves, at least, will need dealing with either way,” Solas pointed out prosaically. 

That much was true: there was no way the Inquisition would be able to leave possessed demon wolves out here to prey upon people. 

I re-examined that thought, because _possessed demon wolves._ How was this my life? 

Then I shook my head, feeling the steady weight of my own horns. Yeah, this was my life right now. All right. Deep breath. 

"We have to find them, though," I said. "What did she say, north east?" I peered in that direction. There was our half-made camp to the east, where inquisition forces would be trickling in to take advantage of the spindleweed and clear water. And a little more north was... 

"One of the watchtowers is marked that way," Cassandra said. "We will look there first. Please do not tell me," she added in a much drier voice, "that we are to rely upon _my_ skill at tracking."

"Not at all," said Solas mildly.

I wondered if it bothered Solas to be _The Elf With Wilderness Skills_ \-- an elfish stereotype, and a terribly dalish one just to add to the insult -- but I wasn't stupid enough to ask. Maybe if I'd been an elf I could have asked in private, but--

Yeah. No. Nope. Sometimes people way underestimated the value of keeping our mouths shut. At any rate, it remained true that wandering hobo apostates had to catch their dinner. Not only was Solas was the best tracker among us, he even had a ready excuse for the skill. One that wasn’t, ‘I learned it in the Fade’. I wasn't sure how many times that was going to work on Cassandra. God knew it was already wearing thin on Leliana. 

We climbed up into the hills surrounding Redcliffe Farm. The sun had risen properly now, and as long as you didn’t mind the crackle of the Breach and the greenish cast to everything, it wasn’t a bad day. The wind whipped up when we climbed to the top of a rise, and from there I could see a lot of the landscape -- the farm and its dozy druffalo and sprawling golden fields, but also the river and the surprisingly large rift hovering above it. 

It was a lot bigger than some of the ones we’d approached earlier, and even as I thought that I could see a huge terror picking its way around the area beneath it. 

I could disrupt the rift, the same way as I had done with the rift above the pride demon at the temple, but the number of demons meant that we still wouldn’t have killed one of them before the others recovered. We’d be overrun. 

Maybe _not_ that one. 

I looked to the others to see what they thought.

“Yeeaah," said Varric, following my line of sight. “Might wanna wait until we have some backup for that one.” 

“Oh, good.” I was genuinely relieved that somebody else thought that looked like a deathtrap, too. Or, well -- _more_ like a deathtrap. The other ones... looked pretty bad as well. 

The day had hardly started and I was already sore and sweating and dirty-feeling, aching beneath my armour. As soon as I’d considered it, my cudgel felt twice as heavy. I shifted its weight uncomfortably, and in doing so I revealed some new aches.

They‘d probably notice really quickly if I fled into the Hinterlands and squatted in somebody‘s abandoned hut, but the thought was pretty damn tempting. I could even slow down for half a second and think about how I might have ended up in the Dragon Age setting. That'd be nice. 

But I had the green glowy light of obligation in my hand and if I didn‘t help, demons would overrun everything. People would die, and, much more awfully, civilisation would break down pretty thoroughly. Eventually even a cozy abandoned hut in the Hinterlands would feel the breakdown of society as these people knew it. That meant I would feel it too, eventually -- which made running away pointless. 

For about one second I contemplated asking Solas if he couldn’t find a way to give the stupid fucking anchor to somebody else -- but of course a) if he could, he would doubtless have taken the power by now and b) asking that would tip my hand something fierce. 

I was still very uncertain and wary about Solas. I was pretty sure he meant well, in the very broadest sense, but I was also pretty sure he was disinclined to accept constructive criticism of his many awful, awful decisions.

Right now, though, he was crouched with his bare toes dug into the icy soil, collecting embrium flowers for potions. He had propped his staff against the trunk of a huge pine.

I looked away. “See anything that looks like wolves?” I asked, trying to drag my thoughts back to the point. 

“Plenty,” said Cassandra. Her tone was ominous and I braced myself, following her sweeping gesture.

Signs of wolves weren't hard to find. As soon as I started looking - guided by the jerk of Cassandra’s chin - I could see the bones. They had evidently been splintered by the force of huge hungry jaws and left discarded. Nothing was buried, and as we moved on we saw where an entire druffalo had gone down. Huge pieces of its flesh had been left for scavengers to eat. It reeked and I was glad for the breeze. 

"They're not even hungry," Cassandra said in a low, disgusted voice. It only took one look around to discover how right she was. They weren't killing for food or even, as far as I could tell, for amusement; they were just, well, killing. Again and again and again, dropping one bleeding carcass when it stopped moving and just racing on to the next. 

“A demon drives them," Solas said, looking grave. ‘Grave' was right up there next to 'bleak' and 'passive aggressive' with his favourite expressions. “I believe it has taken control of the pack.” 

We followed the unmistakable signs of the crazed wolves into the hills, and in those hills were - _you guessed it_ \- more aggressive apostates. No matter how we yelled that we were not templars and that we didn’t actually want to kill them all, they responded to the appearance of strangers -- strangers who, in Cassandra’s case, were wearing obvious religious symbols -- on the horizon with a ferocity born of absolute panic. It was as though they were so hyper alert, so primed for it, that any stimulus was enough to set them off -- and set them off it did. Explosively. Violently. And once it had escalated that much, there was nothing for it but more violence. 

Once, as soon as a mage laid eyes upon us, there was a rending of flesh and a shattering of bone and from the wreck of her body rose something just... just awful. 

It defied description, fleshy and fat and many-jointed, bubbling from its mouths, and it was coming for us. 

“Abomination!” Cassandra’s voice rang a warning, loud and clear in the cold air. 

“Why is it _always_ blood magic?” Varric wondered bitterly, just as he raised his crossbow. 

There must have been demons having a field day out here. Not the corrupt spirits stumbling through the rifts, but proper demons, ones waiting in the Fade, hungering for a taste of reality, preying on the minds of the desperate and the unwary. 

That fight was grim, and the abomination, when we put it down, left nothing but a pile of sweat-reeking rags behind.

“It’s a wonder there aren’t more,” I muttered, toeing the fabric. 

“Come away from that,” said Cassandra, eyeing me with something hot and suspicious in her gaze. 

I didn’t think there was much danger anymore, but I did as she said. 

“Contrary to Chantry superstition, it is not easy for a skilled mage to become an abomination,” Solas explained.

“Yeah? You might want to tell that to Kirkwall,” said Varric. 

“No.” Cassandra shook her head. “Many of these rebels were trained and Harrowed Circle mages,” she said, shaking the blood from her sword with small, deft flicks. “Much of their training has been in avoiding possession. This...” she paused, taking in the damage to the landscape caused by our fight and the vile rags and the corrosive tang of the Fade drifting in the air with just one glowering look, “did not have to happen.” 

“Harrowed, huh?” I murmured. I knew of it, of course, but I hadn’t really considered the value of it before now. Maybe it _was_ imperative to know that a mage could confront and rebuff a demon. 

...I wondered if anyone would make me do that. 

Hopefully not. I couldn’t even use the energy from the Fade properly anyway. 

I eyed the rags where the abomination had been uncertainly. 

“It is a quaint rite,” said Solas mildly, “in which a Circle teaches its charges that all demons and spirits will attempt to possess them. You may be thankful you were never taken to one.”

Cassandra’s expression should have flayed him, or at least taken off the top few layers of his skin. “That is unworthy. I will not pretend the Harrowing is kind, but it is necessary.” 

He was completely unmoved. “If that brings you comfort, Seeker.” 

Pointedly, she ignored him. 

_Yikes._

I kept my eyes on my toes. As the only untrained mage (probably?) here, it seemed like a bad idea to involve myself in that conversation.

At any rate, that was the only real abomination we faced that day, at least. Many of the mages panicked and attacked us, but mostly they went down quickly and easily. 

The next ones we came across consisted of two mercenaries and a wild-eyed apostate clutching an enormous glowing book. 

After the abomination, there was no hesitation in any of us -- not even in Solas, who seemed more sympathetic to the mages in general. Varric took out one of the soldiers with a crossbow bolt shot right through the eye slit of his helmet.

Cassandra dove in right after him, shield before her and blade bare in her hand, and as she went the air burned around the spellbinder and all his spellcraft failed him. She collided with him with a thunderous crash of steel, none of which drowned out his screaming. 

“Adaar," said Solas, and I blinked away. There was still one more, running for us, and Varric was reloading. 

“Yep,” I said. 

With a clean twist and slash of his staff through the air, Solas froze the second mercenary nearly solid, steam and glittering ice streaming from him, and I gathered my enormous bulk beneath me and charged in hot on the heels of that spell. Up close the mercenary’s face was frozen in an expression of horror. He was maybe all of eighteen. 

I threw my whole weight behind the blow, and when my club collided with his head it cracked. Sundered, the ice fell apart, and so did the young man under it. He was dead before his body fell. 

“All clear?”

“Clear,” said Cassandra, wiping the blood from her sword on and resheathing it with a raspy drag. 

“Nice shot,” I said quietly to Varric. It felt very odd to be complimenting anybody on how efficiently they killed other people, but at least when Varric made a nice shot it was clean and quick and over before it began. 

“I can’t take all the credit.” He patted Bianca fondly. “This lady’s all class.”

_Riiight._

It seemed unfair to leave Cassandra to search the bodies, so gingerly I joined her. The mercenary whose head I’d caved in was damp from the melting ice, and his clothing was clinging. I came up with an elfroot potion, some cash and a carving of a dog. 

I had no idea how much any of the money was actually worth, so it meant little to me when I saw it. The carving meant he was probably Ferelden, I supposed. Of these things, the potion looked most valuable to me, although god knew if it was actually useful in any regard. 

I put it away in my pack and determined to ask Solas about it later. For now, we still had to find the spot marked for the lookout. 

It smelled like an abattoir out here. I was glad to move on.

We found the x-marks-the-spot place that Dennet's kid had pointed out and looked around for a while, until Cassandra had determined (through much reluctant hmming and ughing) that it was a decent place for a lookout. 

"What do you think?" she said, tipping her head back to peer up at me. It took me a second to realise she was doing it because she was actually addressing her question me.

I blinked. "Seeker Pentaghast, I don't know the first thing about watch towers." Or soldiers, or killing things, or really anything relevant to our current situation. I had a degree in literature though. It was almost as relevant in Thedas as it was on earth.

"Yet your people are famed the world over for their skill at war," she pointed out. 

I frowned, which must have looked thunderous on my face, although it wasn’t like I could intimidate Cassandra. "My people," I muttered, blowing out my cheeks. "I'm not Qunari. I'm vashoth. It's not the same." 

Cassandra looked at me like I was splitting the finest of hairs, and maybe to her I was, but -- "The skills you're talking about are cultural, not biological. Your people are famed for their mortalitasi and those necropolis places. Were you born knowing about necromancy?" 

Her face clouded over. "Do not be ridiculous," she said in a flat, closed voice. 

Well, there you go. "For whatever it's worth, I think it looks fine." 

"Leliana's report says you were part of a band of mercenaries," said Cassandra.

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit._

"Does it?" I said in my best I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it voice. 

"A mercenary?" Varric said, squinting at me. "Well, it makes better sense than a pastry chef," he said cheerfully. 

"I do not believe the Herald ever said he was a - a _pastry chef_ ," said Cassandra, sputtering out the words ‘pastry chef’ like they offended her very being. 

I grinned. I'd never said anything about patisserie but Varric had evidently taken my interest in cooking and run with it. Bless his abundant chest hair, he had _headcanons_. 

"I do make a mean batch of honey biscuits," I said solemnly. 

Cassandra's eyebrows furrowed, as though the idea of the towering, horned vashoth was hard to reconcile with baking biscuits. 

Varric looked delighted. “That, I have to see.”

It wasn’t the smoothest subject change, but I made it out alive. For now. 

We marked the first of the watchtower spots with a knife-ended stick that we jammed deep into the earth and a cloth Cassandra unrolled to tie to the top of it. It bore the symbol of the flaming skewered eyeball, so it was unmistakable. That, combined with the markers on our maps, should tell the troops precisely where to build. 

There was a stream that ran through the hills this high up, and when we hit the dip where it ran between rises there was a stout dwarven body crumpled awkwardly against a rocky slope. 

“Carta,” said Varric. He sounded pretty sure. He dug through the box beside the body - evidently a messenger or courier of some kind - and came up with a handful of coins and a new set of armour. “Not bad,” he mused. 

We took the stuff with us, because the Inquisition coffers were basically empty. We could outfit somebody, or sell it or barter it. Sad but true. 

We got wet to the knees -- or mid-thigh in Varric’s case -- skirting the rift that seemed far too large right then, and followed the broken bones and discarded carcasses along the banks of the murmuring river. There was a cool humidity in the air, a gentle spray of water now and then, and a bunch of nugs scurrying this way and that among the spindleweed.

“Ah,” said Solas, and it took me a moment to pick out what he’d seen.

“These must be the wolves,” Cassandra murmured, following his gaze. 

The wolf he’d spotted was not what I thought of when I thought of a wolf -- it looked more like a wolfhound than a wolf, huge and lean and ragged-looking, but without the pleasantly sociable face of a wolfhound. This creature had knifelike teeth and pricked, pointed ears, and as we watched it scented the air, ears twitching. 

Its eyes turned toward us, and there was an unholy intelligence and a purplish gleam in them. 

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Varric agreed grimly. 

He levelled Bianca at the wolf and took a long moment to line up her sights. Then he slowed his breath, stilled completely and pulled her trigger. There was a whining click from Bianca and the wolf just dropped, right where it stood. 

“One for me,” he said with an unfriendly sort of smile. 

“I did not realise we were keeping score,” murmured Solas.

This banter was all well and good, but the felling of their packmate alerted all the other wolves in the vicinity, and shortly after Solas’s last word hung in the air over the river, a chorus of threatening growls greeted us.

I counted five. 

One of them tipped its head back and howled.

As if that had been a signal, Solas’s barrier fell around us like a shining cloak, and Cassandra charged. I, too, took a deep breath and waded in. 

We emerged battered but victorious and then we followed the stragglers back to a cave where there were even more possessed wolves -- just in a dim cavern this time. They darted around, leaping and snarling and astonishingly athletic. 

“Shit!” I yelped, upon discovering that as I lunged to attack one another had changed direction, come up behind me, and buried its knifelike teeth in my fucking thigh. I bellowed, cracking it on the skull with more enthusiasm than actual skill. 

It stumbled away, dazed and bleeding from one eye, and another came out of nowhere to fling itself at my hand. 

Lysette had told me in no uncertain terms _never_ to drop my weapon -- so of course the first thing I did was to drop my weapon and yelp like an idiot. 

“Herald!” yelled Cassandra. She was some distance away but she'd evidently been keeping an eye out and saw me falter.

I swore again, scrambling for my club, heart racing with fear as well as exertion. None of them could spare the attention to do more than glance my way and hope for the best.

I blinked at a sudden, telling flare of light from Cassandra's direction, a bright wash of green that shattered cool dimness of the cavern. It announced the arrival of the demon who’d taken control of the pack. It was a terror that looked like nothing so much as a huge, spindly-legged insect, and it boiled up from beneath the earth, hissing and screaming, and knocked Cassandra right on her butt and screamed its demonic little lungs out right in her face. 

“Shit, shit," I yelled helplessly, freezing for a second, and then I didn’t even have enough breath to swear. A wolf barrelled into my knee and sent me sprawling onto my side. I hit the rock in a bruising clatter of metal, winded with the impact of it. I saw stars, and then I saw huge bloodied teeth. A set of jaws went for my thigh, and even though I was armoured I could feel the terrifying pressure of them, feel something give way unpleasantly in my leg with a horrific meaty noise. The rank smells of fur and old meat brushed my face. 

I could see that awful gleam in the wolf’s eyes.

\-- but that, in turn, meant that its eyes were in reach, and I scrambled for a weapon even as I shoved my fingers in one of them. 

I must have hit something pretty important in the eye-related vicinity, because the wolf yelped and made a high, frightened noise. It was the sound of primal fear overriding the murderous drive of the demon, just for a second. 

Then my stiff fingers closed again on my club and I swung at its head like it was a baseball bat. 

Blood flew. A barrier shimmered over me again, and I used the moment’s reprieve to stagger to my feet with the help of the rocky wall behind me. I took a deep, laboured breath. 

Solas had (wisely, I thought) taken a position behind Cassandra in a narrow space between rocky walls. He had a bloodied arm, but he was just as deft with his staff as ever. 

I shakily swung my club at another encroaching wolf, trusting more to its weight and momentum than the strength of my worn muscles. The strike caught it on the side and sent it ducking away, growling low. As soon as I rested my full weight on my left leg to lift the other I felt the radiating pain above my knee increase dramatically -- and I also felt the weakness in the limb and I knew that it would give out if I wasn't very careful with it. 

A second wolf darted in to snap at me, a feint to draw me out so its packmate could attack. I swiped at it and nearly hit its nose, but it, too, ducked away.

“Just hold on, kid!”

I glanced up to the high ground -- frankly inexplicably, because I couldn’t see a way to get up there -- and there was Varric, raining down death from above. 

I couldn’t spare him much attention because there was another low growl and a new rush of fur and teeth and hot breath, but I thought he was aiming for the demon itself and not my wolves anyway. The sentiment was encouraging, though. 

I cracked one of the wolves on the nose with my cudgel and sent it whimpering backward to pace and growl, bleeding from the mouth. I risked a look toward the demon itself. 

It seemed that Cassandra, thank god, was on her feet again. She’d taken a hit to the face at some point and when she bared her teeth in a snarl there was blood trickling between them. 

As I watched, ice coalesced around the terror, freezing it to the spot, and Cassandra hurled herself full-tilt at the thing, slamming into it with her shield. The ice shattered and the demon staggered, stunned and slowed by the chill, and Varric shot and Cassandra lunged and behind them both Solas brought his staff down, blasting some kind of energy from its tip. 

That seemed to do it, finally, and the demon went up in a strange hiss of sharp-smelling Fade-smoke and light, breaking apart from the damage. 

The remaining wolves still lunged at me, too crazed and confused to take advantage of their sudden freedom. One of them sprouted a crossbow bolt from the middle of its skull and dropped like a rock. The other one was a lot easier to hit without its pal running interference, and with an effortful grunt I brought my club down upon its spine. 

There was an awful crack, which I could now hear without the overwhelming sound of demonic wailing. The wolf staggered, and then its parts stopped working and it sagged. It made frightened whining noises, moving its front legs frantically. 

I shoved off from the rocky wall with a wobble and crushed its skull. 

Then I stared at it, exhausted, for a few seconds. 

The silence was deafening. 

Cassandra cleared her throat. "With that demon dead, the farmers should be safe from the wolves." I couldn’t tell if she had noticed the silence too or if she just meant to remind us why we’d had to have the fight. 

"I expect the wolves are also pleased to be freed from the demon's control,” Solas murmured. 

“Solas. We _killed_ all of them,” I pointed out breathlessly. I could feel bruised muscles expanding with every breath -- I must have slammed something hard enough to bruise against the inside of my armour at some point, but I couldn't think when. 

“Better that they are dead than that they live but have no will of their own," said Solas with a hard finality in his voice. 

I wasn’t sure about that, exactly, and from the furrow between his brows neither was Varric. "Well. At least they're dead and we're not."

Fighting the wolf pack had not been much like fighting the demons at the rifts, even though the terror demon was basically the same. The wolves had behaved as a pack even under the power of the demon, and that had made them so much more effective than your regular confused demon. 

All of us were looking worse for wear, with the arguable exception of Varric. He had been tossed on his butt by the demon once but he had, by virtue of his vantage up high, received little damage from the wolves at ground level. 

We limped back to the camp we’d made right next to the farm. My leg wouldn't take my weight for very long, but the only one who stood a chance in hell of bracing me up was Cassandra, and she too was injured. It wasn't far, so we went slowly. 

There was a water source right next to the camp, thank Christ. The fire pit required wood, of course, but Varric took some from a pile behind one abandoned farmhouse on the property. It probably belonged to some of the farmers who’d headed for the Crossroads instead of remaining on the wolf-and-demon infested farm, but it wasn’t like they were using it right then. 

Cassandra stripped off her armour, exposing the wound in her side -- the side of her sword-arm, not covered as easily by her shield. Something had flanked her and gotten in a lucky hit. Her cuirass was dented where the steel had been crushed by the sheer physical strength of the terror demon. She was lucky she was wearing it, though, since we could all see the pattern of damage in the metal. Those tender places from where she'd bled into the linen padding beneath were nowhere near as badly injured as they could have been.

Beginning to pull my own armour away from my leg, I abruptly stopped at the sudden flare of pain when it moved. Yeowch. I looked down at the bloodied metal and leather warily for a moment but -- it had to come off. I braced myself against the feeling and pulled it away in short, jerky movements. 

Ow 

Teeth had gone through the weaker parts of the armour, where the joints sacrificed some protection for flexibility. I could stick my littlest fingertip through one of them. Those had been big teeth. 

My leg was a bit of a mess. The punctures were narrow but deep, and once the wolf had gotten her teeth in, she'd crushed and pulled. The lower half of my leg was washed with red blood, and I could feel the big muscles in my thigh cramping around those damaged spots. 

Once the fire was going, all wood-smoky and cracking in the cool midday air, we boiled elfroot leaves until the water turned faintly green, and then used the still-hot water to clean out the wounds. Solas drew the soggy leaves from it, too, to cover the wounds before we bandaged them. Apparently all this would help prevent infection, which might otherwise be caught inside when we took our potions, which would help the wounds closed at a greatly accelerated rate. 

I wrinkled my nose at the odd bitter-grass taste. It was not, as the games had suggested to me, an instant process. 

"How long, do you think?" I asked after having felt the potion start to work, burning a little at the site of the injury -- and at the sites of a hundred smaller injuries, which I'd noticed less until they started to sting. 

"A day or two, for us," Cassandra said, having glanced over. "Less, for Solas. His injury is shallower. You have little experience with such potions?" 

I shrugged. "Not much, no." 

I wondered if that was too risky, since Leliana had obviously discovered the mercenary group from which Adaar was meant to have come. They seemed unlikely to guess the truth of what had happened but there were other things they might think, which... well, would they hurt me if they thought I was an imposter? They still needed me to close rifts, but I wasn't sure. On the other hand, it would look suspicious - and be dangerous! - if I pretended to have knowledge about fighting and healing that I just didn't. 

"Hm," said Cassandra, which could have meant anything. ...Great. 

We rested there in silence for a few long minutes. Solas retreated to the fire to pour a cup of the elfroot tisane for himself to drink down and Varric sat on the rocky slope, facing the little body of water with its abundance of dark-leaved spindleweed as he cared for his crossbow. Even Cassandra didn't put her cuirass back on. I very much hoped we were done with fighting for the day. I was exhausted. 

"We must have enough influence to call the chantry mothers to meet with the inquisition in public by now," Solas said finally, once he'd choked down his elfroot tisane. "Closing the rifts, even this far out, has been noticed." 

Hard not to notice that, really. Sudden lessening of demons trying to eat your face? Not even the local nobility could ignore it completely. And people were bound to be talking. 

I grunted. "Should we go back and talk to Giselle and Leliana about it, then?" 

As one we looked west, toward the Frostbacks and Haven. 

"Might as well," sighed Varric. 

"We should report to Elaina that the wolves have been dealt with first." That was Solas, glancing back toward the farm house in the distance. 

I nodded. Report about the wolves, mark watchtower locations, avoid the sprawling effects of the mage-templar fighting, close the riffs and gather influence and agents... 

There was so much to do, even just over the next few days. And I didn't see that stopping or slowing down any time soon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if there was something you particularly liked. :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero is tired, and tries to take things one step at a time so she doesn't have to think so hard about them

We reported the wolves to Elaina, which resulted in Dennet handing over one of his own horses to us - or, rather, to me.

It was a timely gift. The sad old fellow I'd rode in on wasn't much use for the scouts in the Hinterlands, so he became a pack horse and returned with us. I thought it suited his temperament - and probably his physical condition, although I wasn't an expert - much better than being forced to carry my huge butt around.

With the extra carrying capacity, we could afford to bring back a lot more of the resources we'd collected - elfroot and blood lotus, mainly, although we were also carrying some hides collected by the scouts and a couple of small, fancy trinkets we'd found that Seggrit might be able to trade for actual money.

Wonder of wonders, Varric had also shot a ram as we'd gotten toward the westernmost edge of the Hinterlands, which meant I could look forward to at least one meal that wasn't entirely comprised of _goddamn bloody nug_.

I was... getting a bit fixated on food. Healing potions made me hungry.

Healing potions made everyone hungry, as it happened. They were magic, which was news to me - but then, it made sense, because they targeted actual injuries like flesh wounds and broken bones with an incredible specificity.

Basically, a body drank one, and it pulled all of the available resources into healing at an accelerated rate. That drew off a lot of energy from other bodily processes. Over-using healing potions led to quite a few side effects. These ranged from the weird but only mildly inconvenient - like brittle hair, dehydration and bendy nails - to the downright alarming - like seizures and heart attacks.

I hadn't quite realised this nature of the potions until it was explained to me in Solas's soothing and much too casual voice - which only happened when I muttered that I was hungry enough to eat about six rams.

"Is that..." I paused, looking at the back of Cassandra's glossy head bobbing in time with her horse's gait just ahead of us. I thought better of it. Just - well. There were other types of magic that drew on the life force of people, weren't there?

"Outside the structure of a mage's thoughts, few rules _truly_ apply to magic." Solas met my eyes with a knowing expression. He'd drawn closer to me to say it, and his bratty palfrey eyed the mount I'd been given like she was considering whether to eat him with a red or a white.

"That isn't exactly comforting, Chuckles," muttered Varric, who had evidently overheard his comment.

"I did not intend it to be." There was a silence after that. Solas was really good at stopping a conversation in its tracks.

Our return to Haven felt a lot longer than it was, because we were all tired, filthy, hungry and dealing with the lingering aches of injuries healed too quickly.

When we rode wearily in, I saw the soldiers look up from the sprawling tents and muddied snow where Cullen kept them busy just outside the palisade. The news raced through them: _the Herald has returned_.

I shifted uncomfortably in my saddle. I was increasingly sure I didn't like being 'the Herald'. I had enough ill will toward organised religion without _literally becoming one_. And that was what it felt like - like I'd accidentally stumbled into prophecy, tripped over my own stupid feet and become the centre of a cult. It was... very discomforting.

Despite the gossipy troops all over the place the commander himself was nowhere to be seen. I supposed that didn't automatically mean he wasn't present somewhere. In a crowd of troops, Cullen was only really distinguishable by his huge fuzzy fur. If he took that thing off, he'd just be yet another big strapping Ferelden boy sweating out in the snow.

The naked corral and the big old barn evidently looked like home and comfort to several of the horses, because they pricked their ears and started moving with a great deal more enthusiasm than they had these last days on the road. Not gonna lie, it looked pretty inviting to me right then, too: big, dim and smelling of warm animal and hay, dry and safe from the elements.

I dismounted with a quiet groan and severely wobbly knees - one knee in particular. The healing potions worked a charm, but there was still a raw sort of weakness in one of my legs. I didn't think that would be going away without more traditional healing, which was to say: time and patience.

Despite feeling like crap, it was still really good to be faced with a task I understood for a change. There were no sword fighting or blood magic or hooky rifts here. I might have been rusty at caring for a horse, sure, but once I was doing it, it progressed kind of naturally. I untacked the forder, rinsed his bit and got him some water (or, rather, snow melted into not-that-cold water around by the forge).

Dennet was probably as good as his reputation suggested, because the horse he'd given me was responsive but patient, and seemed content to stand still and let me clean him up. He wasn't _quite_ big enough for me, but he was young and strong, and it wasn't like he was small - he had to be at least eighteen hands to start with. I was lucky he was so well trained, because if he'd decided to be recalcitrant he was big enough to cause trouble. They didn't exactly have rubber curry combs in Haven, but it wasn't that hard to find some brushes, a hoof pick, and at least a rag to wipe down the tack.

It was something I could to do occupy my hands while I was thinking. At first I was impatiently making lists, thinking about what I'd need to do in the coming days: probably they'd make me at least come along to Val Royeaux, which meant travelling for some time. I suspected weeks, but my internal map of Thedas was pretty poor. Still, we were right on the Orlais-Ferelden border here in the Frostbacks, which surely meant we'd be some distance from the capital either way. I wondered if there would be rifts to close along the way. Probably a few...

If I thought about it, this was when - in the game, at least - I'd be able to pick up Vivienne and Sera. I'd liked them both... as characters. Heaven only knew what they'd be like as people.

I paused in my brushing. I... was pretty ready to not be here. I rested one hand on the forder's deep bay coat and stared at it, lost, for a few long moments.

Thedas sucked. Everything was magic. Nothing made proper sense. I had no idea what I was doing. I had horns and a dick. Life was awful.

I closed my eyes, and for a second I could almost imagine myself in another place. It wasn't so much that I missed home - there wasn't that much to miss, really - but I missed familiarity. There was too much change, too fast, and with too many overwhelming pressures involved.

The forder blew out his sides with a big sigh and lowered his huge head to drink again. I echoed his sigh. "I feel you, buddy," I muttered.

He flicked an ear toward me but didn't otherwise do very much at all.

Okay. I took a deep breath. One step at a time.

First, I had to make sure this horse was cared for. With an effort of will I lifted my hand and brushed. The bristles made a soft scraping noise that seemed inordinately loud in the hay-scented hush of the barn.

I wasn't sure if they were sensitive to my mood or just dead tired themselves, but the other three managed to get their mounts sorted out and they left without going out of their way to attract my attention.

I brushed my horse down long after he was passably clean. It was getting dark by the time I actually put him up for the night.

I was hungry enough to catch and eat a nug of my own by the time I left the barn, but there was no doubt in my mind that Leliana, Cassandra and probably even Mother Giselle would be waiting to pounce.

All right. Okay. That was... just another step between me and a warm place to sleep, then. I took another deep breath.

"One foot in front of the other," I muttered encouragingly to myself. Then I straightened my spine and made my way to the Chantry.

Of course, when I arrived at the doors there was already a crowd of onlookers surrounding two screaming men.

I recognised the templar armour straight off - the silvery finish with the flaming sword was extremely distinctive. It took me a little longer to realise that the other man was a mage. But then - of course he was. He was arguing with a templar.

The crowd joined in with the yelling, milling restlessly and churning the snow brown underfoot in the cooling evening light. All together, their voices raised to a cacophony of deafening sound, all _you killed her!_ and _you let her die_!

Even as I approached I hesitated, wondering if I should get involved. I did need to get past them, of course, but...

The templar went for his sword, and I felt my whole being light up, intent and hyperaware, muscles fluttering in my gut and up my spine, hands clenching.

"ENOUGH!" Suddenly Cullen was right there, big shoulders hunched under his trailing, distinctive furs. "Enough -" and he shoved the two apart with an impressive demonstration of strength and leverage. The hard edge of his vambrace scraped noisily on the templar's armour.

"Knight-Captain," said the templar. He was protesting, or perhaps looking for a sympathetic response, but it just seemed to make Cullen angry.

"That is not my title anymore," he hissed, glowering at the pair. "We're all the Inquisition now."

But by then it seemed like violence had been averted - by a hair's breadth, but still, averted. Cullen let them both go. It was no surprise to see the pair glare at each other and then go their separate ways, weaving through the crowd and away.

Which was when the Chancellor showed up. Say what you like about Chancellor Roderick - and, oh, I would - but he did know how to make the most of a cue.

"And what is that, exactly?"

"Chancellor," drawled Cullen, looking increasingly put-upon. "Are you back already? Haven't you done enough?"

"I'm curious as to how you and your 'herald' will restore order as you've promised."

 _I figured I'd start with closing the fucking holes in the sky,_ I thought sourly, but since I had no desire to be brought into this conversation at all, I didn't come right out and say it. I was too tired, too worn - and my temper was too uncertain. I just wanted to get this over with, eat and sleep.

They weren't slowing down, though. Were they really going to argue out here right in front of the doors of the chantry? With everyone watching from the corners of their eyes, waiting to see who put on the better performance?

Cullen shot the aging Chancellor a withering look. "Of course you are." He looked around. "All of you, back to work!"

It surprised me to see how easily people obeyed - everyone from chantry sisters to troops to Leliana's eagle-eyed scouts took him at his word and dispersed at Cullen's command. I suspected if I'd tried the same thing people would have gawked instead.

I took advantage of the thinning crowd to make my way to the chantry. I did have to walk right past them, but -

"The rebel Inquisition and its so-called _Herald of Andraste_?" Roderick asked archly, and in my general direction.

I ignored him completely and kept walking. One step. Another. _Don't make eye contact_ , I thought desperately, trying to avoid him in much the same way I'd avoid an aggressive fundraiser on a street corner.

Cullen's expression did something complicated when I strode right past them and just kept going, and then a moment later I was past and I couldn't see him anymore. I heard the Chancellor say something, smug with disgust, but by the trailing end of whatever he was saying I had already made it indoors.

The heavy wooden door of the chantry swung shut behind me. Phew.

All right.

I'd made it to the chantry. Good work, me. Outside I could hear the rise of Roderick's voice and the muffled counterpoint of Cullen's. It seemed like the shriller Roderick got, the more viciously condescending Cullen became.

"Their behaviour helps no one," murmured a voice, and I turned to see Mother Giselle. Her white clothing stood out starkly in the dim firelight inside the chantry.

I shrugged. Roderick could stay and squawk at Cullen until he was thoroughly humiliated by the experience, or he could leave. It was pretty much up to him.

"I see you made it to Haven safely," I said instead of commenting. It was easier.

Mother Giselle inclined her behatted head. "The Inquisition has been... more welcoming than I expected."

I raised my eyes to the ceiling for a second. It was high up. Vaulted. Big. Churches, man, they give you the same impression of grandiose bullshit no matter where you go.

"Sorry if I lowered your expectations," I said after a second.

"You did not," she said.

I gave her a second to elaborate, but she didn't. "Okay." I left it at that.

"I have provided Leliana with a list of names and... some information," Mother Giselle said quietly. Her voice dropped even lower on the phrase _some information_ , which almost made me smile in a grudging, wry sort of way. She made it sound like it was the filthiest of gossip. "I hope you will be able to use it well."

"I think that's what we're going to be discussing pretty shortly." I nodded ahead to where Josephine was closing the door to her office behind her. Even in the dim candle-light of the Chantry, her golden clothing glimmered. Her hair was glossy and her skin was clean, and she looked distinctly out of place in a rich, pretty sort of way. She looked very... burnished.

I saw Leliana meet her there, melting out of the shadows unexpectedly - Josephine jumped at her sudden appearance, and the little candle attached to her clipboard flickered along with her, making both their shadows twitch.

There was another snarling voice outside, short, sharp and authoritarian. I tilted my head, feeling the odd weight of my horns drag my head a little further than I'd intended. I was probably never going to become completely accustomed to that.

Those were clearly the sweet dulcet tones of Seeker Pentaghast.

The door to the chantry opened and allowed Cassandra entry. She moved implacably, like she would build up momentum and walk right through anything that stood in her way. Which was... ah, truth in advertising, really. Whole mountain ranges probably got out of her way when they saw her coming.

Roderick had nothing on a mountain range, so no doubt she'd defused the situation outside just by sheer force of personality. Sure enough, Cullen followed in Cassandra's wake. He drew the big doors closed after them with a creak of protesting hinges.

Cassandra looked at me and jerked her chin toward the war room.

"I believe Seeker Pentaghast is trying to get your attention, Herald."

"So she is. Have a good evening," I said, detaching myself from the company of the priest and falling into step.

"Maker go with you," murmured Mother Giselle.

I twitched. _Somebody_ was going with me, but I was like ninety per cent sure that was Commander Cullen, whose strides were only a little shorter than mine.

We headed into the war room. I hip-checked the door closed behind us. When I turned around, Cullen was lighting the candles at the table and Leliana had found a lion-faced marker for the map.

She dropped it unceremoniously upon Val Royeaux.

We all looked at it for a second.

Then, "Having the Herald address the Clerics is not a ... _terrible_ idea," Josephine said.

"You can _not_ be serious," said Cullen.

Josephine pursed her lips and shot a contemplative look at me. "Mother Giselle isn't wrong: at the moment, the Chantry's only strength is that they are united."

"The danger to the Herald," started Cullen.

"Even ignoring the danger to me," I interrupted, "I don't really like public speaking. Or the public, actually," I added in a falsely thoughtful tone, which I thought was witty and adorable. Not one of them agreed with me, given their blank faces, but Josephine cracked a perfunctory smile to acknowledge the effort. "I don't really have many social skills."

"That," said Cassandra, "is no secret."

Implying, no doubt, that Cassandra had better people skills than I did. I rubbed between my horns. Well. _Maybe._ Yikes.

"I was hoping we could send Leliana, actually," I admitted.

There was a pause.

"I?" Leliana said after a moment.

"Well... sure. Left Hand of the Divine, well known in Orlais, pretty, charismatic, liked among the nobility? A lot of things are easier to swallow when you like the person saying them, right?"

"How flattering," said Leliana, staring at me with a narrow curve to her mouth. It wasn't a smile, because smiling implies something good. I wasn't sure what that expression was, but it meant nothing good.

Cassandra made a considering noise between her teeth. "You are certainly more familiar with the Game than most," she pointed out.

"She'd be safer," Cullen mused quietly, cutting his eyes toward Leliana.

"Oh, yes," she agreed. "But it is more important that I do my work here."

Josephine sighed. "In other circumstances it may be a possibility. Unfortunately, Leliana is not well-trusted - her position as the Left Hand will work against our appearance of honesty and her reputation is..." She made a delicate noise instead of going on.

At that, Leliana's complicated expression really did resolve itself into a smile. She was lovely when she smiled, all creamy skin and red lips in the flattering warmth of the candle light.

Josephine didn't need to explain Leliana's reputation. Everybody knew she was dangerous. More dangerous than the huge, behorned dude with the glowing hand? In Orlais, apparently.

"And it is the Herald that the people must support," Josephine finished.

Herald, herald, _herald_. I really didn't like feeling like some holy figurehead. That was what the Pope was for. Or... the Divine, or whatever. They really needed to put a new one in place. Hopefully Cassandra, since she was indomitable and relentlessly even-handed.

"Look, I know this is a religious," I waved one arm, "organisation, and I know you're all Andrastian, and I know you want to use this... 'Herald of Andraste' thing to pull a fast one on a lot of devout people. But do you think you could stop referring to me as 'the Herald' to my face, at least? Like, in private? It's... not comfortable."

"That is what you are," Leliana demurred, looking up at me from beneath her eyelashes.

I clenched my jaw. Leliana had a pretty face for such a mean mouth, really. "Wow, do you want to talk about how you're shafting your own followers again?" I wondered. Then I shook my head. I really didn't want to have that argument now, and probably never with Leliana. I was so damn tired. "This isn't a big request, surely?"

"I _do_ believe your presence is a matter of providence," Cassandra said flatly. "But I also believe we do not have time for this right now." She took my arm in her hand. Holy _balls_ she was strong. Her voice soared, ringing and clear and certain: "You will go to Val Royeaux. You will address the clerics. And you _will_ make them see reason."

I stared at her.

I licked my lips.

My heart thumped heavily inside my chest, a huge percussive beat that echoed down my long limbs.

"Sure," I said quietly. "Fine."

I wrapped my fingers around her thumb and yanked, using my own not-inconsiderable strength to detach her grip where it was the weakest. I wasn't gentle, and I saw the flinch that passed over her face.

She withdrew, clenching and unclenching her hand.

"Yes," I said flatly. "I think your plan is terrible," I said directly to Josephine, who looked distinctly uneasy at the tense atmosphere. "But I'll go and talk to them. We don't have a lot of options right now, and it would be stupid of me to argue with the only plan we have to close the hole in the sky."

There was a pause. It felt sort of grudging. That was a trend here at the war table.

"I will go with him," said Cassandra. Her voice sounded like she had resigned herself to babysitting me for the foreseeable future.

I eyed her. I wanted to kick up a fuss out of sheer, seething spite and frustration, but it wasn't practical. Of course Cassandra had to come. I'd be completely lost without her, which was one of the reasons I hadn't wanted to do this in the first place. I took a deep breath instead and stared right past her. "Sounds lovely. Are we done?"

"We are," said Leliana.

I was out of there before the echo of her voice died.

"Herald," said Mother Giselle as I stormed past.

"Another time, please," I called back to her. I didn't wait for a response.

One step at a time, I reminded myself. Food, then sleep.

Then...

Then Val Royeaux, apparently.

The idea was huge, looming and uncomfortable. I didn't want to go to a huge new city as a holy icon. I certainly didn't want to be accused of being a false prophet when I'd never claimed to be any kind of prophet before at all.

I rubbed my forehead instead.

Deep breath. One step at a time.

Food. Sleep.

Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if there was something you liked about this chapter. :)


	13. Chapter 13

Food was prepared for anyone who needed it and couldn't cook or afford her own in the big ovens at the back of the tavern.

There were three elves who worked there this evening, all under the supervision of a human who yelled at them relentlessly but at least didn't call them names or try to hurt them. They were engaged in a rapid dance of cooking and conveying, trying to feed the troops and workers without letting their waiting times get too long.

I fell into line behind an elf with plaited hair and a leather apron. I could probably have jumped the queue and I was kind of hungry enough to try it - but if I was committed to not wanting to be a religious icon, it'd be counterproductive to make people treat me like one. I lined up for my dinner like a non-asshole.

Tonight, like most nights I'd seen at Haven, dinner was a soup made from the picked-over bones and joints of several nugs, seasoned liberally with turnips and more nug. As far as I could tell, they started the huge pots early in the morning and let it cook all day - then just added to it, leaving what I'd hesitantly call the 'flavour' to develop as the pots simmered. People came by at all hours for one or two meals a day.

It wasn't a bad way to make soup, exactly, but nug was a strong flavour and by the time evening rolled around, it tended to taste of nothing but nug at all. By the time I collected my bowl from a wild-eyed elf, I couldn't even taste the turnips, really.

I'm not saying I could have done it better but...

Well. No. I could have done it better.

But it wasn't my job here, and I really had no experience cooking for this number of people. I could blitz a dinner for ten or twelve, but there were easily ten times that many here in Haven.

I leaned against the side of one of the nearby cabins, watching the line progress as I devoured my soup. Just because it tasted like a pig's arse didn't mean I'd magically stopped being ravenously hungry.

"Thought you could cook, Herald," drawled Varric from right beside me, making me jump.

"Oh my god," I hissed, clutching my soup to my thundering heart. "You scared the piss out of me!"

The phrase that nearly made its way out was 'Christ, why are you so short?' because that was largely how I'd missed his approach. My peripheral vision was a lot higher than his head. Goddamn. Asking the dwarf why he was short was probably poor form, though. I mean. Maybe.

Varric breathed a low, pleased huff of laughter. "Ladies and gentlemen: the mighty Herald of Andraste."

"Yeah, she gets startled by stealthy rogues like anyone else. Who'd have thought?" I asked sarcastically.

Even here. Herald, herald, _herald_. It was a little easier when Varric said it, because he was a sarcastic son of a bitch - he said it with an irony, a heaviness, humour with a sting in its tail. He seemed pleased with the melodrama of it, but he didn't take it seriously. Still... I thought I might try again, and Varric could be more receptive. "Can you, at least, please stop calling me that?" I said plaintively.

He was giving me an odd look to start with, but now he raised his eyebrows. "And call you what, then?"

 _I don't know, Varric, maybe my name?_ I didn't say it. Varric was attached to his nicknames. "I don't care. Just something not religious. Or at least not Andrastian. You can call me Esmerelda for all I care."

"Huh," he said slowly. Then he eyed me. "Nah, Esmerelda doesn't suit you. You don't have the legs for it." There was a pause. "Leave it with me. I'll think of something."

I was sure he would, too - something weird and embarrassing, no doubt.

"Fine," I said, feeling too detached to care very much. He could nickname me 'shithead' if he wanted. Just... not _herald_ or _prophet_ or _beatified_ or _sainted._ I stared at my unappetising bowl of soup for a few long moments. "This is all such complete, absolute bullshit."

Varric snorted. "You don't know the half of it."

Yeah, probably not. There'd been all that time before I woke up when Cassandra must have been stalking around frothing at the mouth. Any bystander would have felt like a moth in a hurricane.

"We're heading for Val Royeaux soon. They want me to talk to the priests," I said finally. "Will you come?"

"They want _you_ to do the talking?" He sounded about as incredulous as I felt.

"Don't look at me," I muttered. "I told them to send Leliana." I knew that in the game's original timeline, it was always the Herald who went - but there was no reason why that had to be the case.

"That's such a terrible idea. I just have to come."

I snorted softly. One of those things was correct, anyway. I exhaled noisily. I was hungry enough for another bowl of lacklustre soup, or two or three, but I didn't think I had the energy or patience to line up for it.

"I'm done." I pushed off from the wall and went to leave my bowl for the three harried servants to sort out. Then I went to find somewhere to sleep. I could feel Varric watching me, but he didn't insist on my company and I wasn't really fit for it anyway.

The cabin I'd been sleeping in previously had been taken over by somebody else - I didn't bother going inside, because I could hear several people talking even as I paused outside the door. I couldn't kick them out - it wasn't like it was _my_ place.

Dammit. I stared at the door for a couple of seconds in complete despair. _Please just let me find somewhere to crash_ , I begged nobody in particular.

For a wild second I contemplated the dungeon beneath the chantry - it would be completely freezing, but I was guaranteed to be alone with the mice down there, and it was dark and relatively safe. Then, abruptly, I remembered the cabin where I'd gone looking for the apothecary's notes. It was outside the palisade, and arguably less safe for it, but it was pretty close to the encampment of soldiers - and it was tucked away between the evergreens. It had been deserted back then...

I sneakily took a light from a wall sconce - an enclosed lamp, not a torch - and headed out through the snow, past a neat line of tents, and found that the isolated wooden building was still out there, and still just as empty. There was still some wood next to the grate and a pile of slightly musty blankets on the bed there. I dragged them onto the floor, unwilling to risk the mouldering mattress.

Setting the fire was a little harder - I had wood, and I had a light, but I didn't have much in the way of actual kindling. For a second I eyed the excerpt from the Chant of Light that had been left in the room since I last showed up. My willingness to burn part of the holy book warred for a second with my gut-deep horror at, well, burning _a book_.

After a second, horror won out and I headed outside to find some relatively dry twigs instead. My feet crunched as I went, and the shadow of a nug raced across the snow, weird hand-paws leaving little prints to follow.

"Herald," said a light, clear voice, and I thought: _are you serious?_ and _what now?_ and _if I pretend I didn't hear will she go away?_

But I looked up and it was Lysette, looking much smaller once she'd shed her templar armour. Her night-dark hair blended into her surroundings, leaving her skin bright and glowing-pale between the moon and the snow.

"Hi," I said, instead of telling her to piss off, because she'd been a great help to me and we both knew I owed her at least that courtesy, no matter how I felt.

Her eyebrows had that permanent line of consternation or worry between them, but it grew more pronounced as she looked at me in the dark. "I noticed the light from my tent. I came to see who it was," she admitted. "I'm pleased to see you returned safely. Was it... I have heard the fighting has gotten worse."

I hesitated. And then I just said it. "The Hinterlands were awful. The templars have gone crazy. The rifts are everywhere. We ran into possessed wolves and an abomination. The only good thing was that we closed some rifts."

"And found Mother Giselle, of course."

Oh. That. "Of course," I agreed lamely. "I owe you a lot, I think. I probably would have died horribly without your advice and help. Thanks for that."

"I'm glad you found it useful." Her face was difficult to make out in the colourless nocturnal half-light here, but her silhouette straightened with some kind of energy and attention at the comment. "Do you -" she paused.

The pause went on for some time.

I couldn't figure it out, and I didn't have the energy for paying attention. "Yes?"

She cleared her throat. "If Lady Cassandra has no tutor assigned," she began carefully.

"She really doesn't," I assured her. "If you're offering, I would love to have your help."

'Love' was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it wasn't Lysette's fault that the things I wanted her to teach me were gross and unpleasant.

"I'd be happy to," she said, and there was an audible softening in her tone.

"Great. Thank you. Seriously." That was a relief. I had almost not gotten around to thinking about practising my sad and negligible combat skills, but of course I would need to. There was probably quite a bit of combat in my future, unfortunately.

Lysette was perfectly qualified to tutor me in this... by which I meant that she was the only one who'd volunteered.

"Er. Are you... staying out here?" she asked after another pause.

"I was going to." I felt a pang of anxiety at the question. I glanced over my shoulder at the cabin. Since I'd taken the light, it was just a darker shadow in between the trees. Distantly I could see a fire - the soldiers, I thought. "Is that bad?"

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I thought she might have blinked. "No, no, I just thought you'd have somewhere to stay closer to the chantry."

I opened my mouth to tell her that I liked being alone, and then closed it again because maybe that was rude. But I was still waiting for her to say something for me to address, so I could address it and go back inside and sleep.

I shifted awkwardly on my big feet and waited. "Well... no. Nobody said I had to sleep somewhere else?" Nobody had actually told me if there was anywhere specific I was meant to be keeping myself, so in the absence of instruction I'd been slipping into spaces where they came up. Since I owned basically nothing but my armour, that wasn't hard.

"No, of course not. It was a silly thought. I'll just... return to my tent," she said.

"Right," I said encouragingly. "Sleep well."

"Maker go with you."

Of course. I hummed an acknowledgement before taking my bits of kindling back to the cabin.

I eventually did get the fire burning to provide light and heat inside the cabin, although I'd have been lost without the lamp. From a modern perspective, one where fire safety was a thing, it was weird to think that people slept with wood fires just burning merrily in their grates. On the other hand, it was freezing outside and insulation was an uncommon and expensive thing; it was better than the alternative.

When I slumped into my pile of blankets I was ready to lay down and die, but perversely sleep was a long time in coming. Instead I hashed and rehashed what had happened, what could happen, and what I expected to happen given the relatively likely scenario in which events unfolded quite similarly to their progression it the game.

I had a firm idea of what should _not_ happen.

I was not to get everybody killed by pretending to know things about combat or healing or magic that I did not know.

I was not to get myself killed by acting too suspicious and calling down Leliana's wrath.

I was not to allow Solas to find out that there existed another, more technologically advanced, world out there for him to fuck up somehow.

I was not to die, period, before the Breach had been closed. Probably somebody else could face Corypheus if they had to, but the Breach was going to require the anchor embedded in my hand, and I was pretty certain that without that we'd all be fucked.

I thought about the time ahead, the weeks of travelling to get to Val Royeaux, and what awaited us at the other end. I wondered if Sera would be waiting to meet us, winding up the nobility like clockwork, sniggering from the shadows with an arrow notched. Vivienne, too. They could both be pretty unpleasant in their own ways, but in Vivienne's case, Josephine could probably really use the networking opportunity of an ally who knew every member of the Orlesian court personally...

I rolled over and blew out my breath into the old-smelling blankets, shaking my head awkwardly to get them to detach from my horns. It was easier to relax with my face buried beneath the blankets and the glow of the fire blocked out.

Instead of dwelling, I tried some breathing exercises. I'd be worse than useless if I didn't get _some_ sleep.

I did, eventually.

Sleep was never a particular friend of mine. I rarely dreamed of anything much now that I was here, but when I did, especially in Haven, I dreamed of the Fade - not just in the Fade, but also _of_ it: of too-bright, hazy green lights and endless dark rock, of Justinia reaching out to me. Her head was still a triangle, which I had finally realised was her stupid hat.

This time I could hear the _click-click-tap_ of many scurrying feet, and knew that the spiders crawled around us. When I looked I could see their eight-eyed stares glowering out of the dimness.

That wasn't good.

I jerked awake, but when I raised my head there was light outside, brightly reflected from the snow. Time passed differently in the Fade.

I let my head drop back to the floor with a soft _thump_. It was cold outside the blankets and I kicked an edge over one of my feet and rolled a little closer to the fire. It was lick of fire and smoke and embers now, having consumed most of the fuel I'd provided it the night previous, but it was still putting out heat.

I contemplated the things that needed to be done. A bucket filled with snow and kept near the fire would heat to tepid water, which would let me scrub myself down and get the itching sense of dirtiness off my skin. Food from the camp would be yet more nug soup, but I was still hungry and my huge body burnt through fuel alarmingly fast and it wasn't like I had anything to cook or cook with. I should probably stretch my recovering leg.

Last night, when I'd had motivation if not energy, I'd also agreed to work with Lysette to learn more about the fine art of killing things. It seemed like a poor decision in hindsight. I didn't even have the effort in me to _contemplate_ it right now.

I'd need to help with preparations for the trip to Val Royeaux, too. It would be weeks on the road, even with the benefit of a decent mount.

There was a lot to do.

I should probably get up.

I felt tired and heavy, and incapable of assigning any real urgency to any of those tasks. Instead I stared past the fire and did nothing.

"Come on," I muttered. "You're being fucking stupid. Get up."

I knew I had to, but I still didn't do it.

Time passed. I spent it mostly reminding myself that it was stupid and ridiculous and I needed to get up.

The sun was already high in the sky by the time I bullied myself into leaving the blankets, and the knowledge that somebody was sure to come and yell at me eventually was the only thing that really got me moving.

I stumbled up from the fireside with a blanket attached to one horn, wobbling with all my weight on the good leg while the other cramped unhappily in the cold. I tore the blanket getting it off my head and braced myself against one of the walls, slowly stretching out the dodgy limb.

Since I couldn't walk without doing it, the 'stretch your recovering leg' item got ticked off my list of shit to do pretty quickly. That provided a small sense of achievement, so I sat back down and stared at nothing again for about half an hour.

"Nope. Nope, nope, come on." I got back up. Put my boots on. Left the cabin.

"Herald!" Lysette was waiting out here _to ambush me_.

I flinched, twitched, and very nearly walked straight back inside. "Ugh," I said instead.

She looked me up and down. "Adan has some tea. Then we'll start."

It took me that long to realise she was fully armoured and carrying two giant practice swords braced over one of her shoulders.

I made a singularly sad noise. _Nnnooooo._

Her face did something complicated, torn between sympathy and mean laughter, but her spirits were high. I had the distinct sense that if I didn't go with her, she'd drag me by the horns.

Or, worse, make Cassandra do it.

The thought of Cassandra soured my stomach a little. She'd refused my - very simple, actually - request that they call me by name instead of creepy religious title, and yelled at me like I was a recalcitrant child.

I was perfectly capable of behaving like a recalcitrant child, for the record. I'd gone out of my way _not_ to do that, actually...

I heaved a sigh, which turned into a colossal yawn. "Sorry, still tired. Tea. Yeah." I'd have to drink about five or six cups to feel the caffeine, but hopefully Adan had leaves to spare.

Between the glow of my hand and my huge horns I did get a lot of looks, even just walking through Haven, but mostly Lysette and I were left alone until we made it to the apothecary.

The tea was oversteeped and bitter, but I was more drinking it to wake up than because I loved the taste. We begged a leg of boiled nug off the cooks, which was unseasoned and overcooked, tough and pretty disgusting, but it was at least food - and in being horribly overcooked, it was probably not going to make anyone sick. Small mercies, right?

I strapped myself back into my armour while I was drinking, and as we returned to the outside where Cullen's men were learning army tactics, smelling like old metal and salty sweat in the chill, Lysette made me rehash half my experiences out in the Hinterlands. She grilled me relentlessly for details, occasionally demanded demonstrations, and managed to draw out things I thought I'd forgotten.

"You _dropped_ your weapon?" she asked incredulously.

"I didn't do it on purpose," I protested.

Lysette was extremely unimpressed.

The morning - what was left of it - was given to practising an endless series of strikes that Lysette thought ought to be muscle memory.

"It's irregular, but you'll be injured in a fight, too. You may as well learn how to compensate without telegraphing," she advised when she showed me how to modify them for my dodgy leg and keep my balance anyway.

She made me exchange measured strikes with her after, pointing out and correcting dodgy footwork ("You need to have a strong foundation, Herald; if you don't stay on your feet you're finished") and casually smacking my sides when she spotted an easy opening. There were long progressions she seemed to adapt from something else, emphasising parrying where she claimed there were otherwise specific shield movements. Our movements were, at this point, glacially slow, which she said was to ensure I wasn't doing anything stupid that would kill me ("Speed comes later, Herald. Technique first!").

When we rested, she explained strategies and ideas to me. There was a surprising degree of - well, not science, but perhaps mechanical expertise? involved in the average melee.

The last thing she showed me that day was how to use the pressure of somebody else's parry to change the direction of your own strike - which was how I ended up flat on my butt in the snow.

Lysette didn't laugh, but there was a cool satisfaction about her.

"You're no worse than any other beginner," she said when we were done. "You have several advantages, mostly of size. You will be faster with practice, and you Qunari are stronger than southerners are used to. You will be faster than we expect."

"Okay," I agreed. I was exhausted. Again. Still. It hardly mattered. I'd saved up some tiny store of energy, and then we'd gone and expended it upon this.

Practising with Lysette was genuinely a lot harder than many of the fights I'd actually been involved in so far - probably because she was much better trained, and made me go for much longer.

I thought about the few templars I'd run into in the Hinterlands. They _were_ better trained, mostly. Most of the time when we'd fought them, Varric and Solas had worked hard to provide the kind of ranged back up that would allow us to put them down, but... still. Most of the time, I'd only been okay because I'd used the single great advantage I had - my sheer physical size and weight. Once I charged into them, I had an opening.

I scratched my face and wondered if that'd work with Lysette.

"Only if I was not expecting you," she said, having thought about it for a moment. "I'm surprised - pleased, but surprised - that you weren't picked off by a marksman. There aren't that many in the order, I suppose, but -"

I cringed. "Uh, I did take a crossbow bolt through the arm once."

"Ah," she said. "Crossbows are difficult to defend against. Shields thick enough to stop them are heavier than what's practical. But that apostate must know the shield spell. They all do."

'That apostate' was one way of putting it, I supposed. I wondered what Solas would think. Probably he wouldn't think very much at all - he had little respect for templars. I just nodded. "He seems pretty good at it, but he's not everywhere."

Then I rubbed between my horns again. I was getting used to them in some ways, but mostly that meant working around them. Let's just say I wasn't going to sleep with a pillow again any time soon.

"You seem to think pretty highly of the templar order," I pointed out. "You've got no interest in joining them?"

"I did," Lysette mused, kicking the rock beneath her. It went _clang_ against the metal toe of her shoe. "But... what they've done, breaking away from the Chantry. It's not right. I won't be joining them again. At least here, with the Inquisition... you are not directly opposed to the Chantry."

"Right," I said slowly. "The Inquisition is definitely not opposed to what the Chantry stands for, but the priests themselves... I mean, you know the Chantry doesn't really like us much right now, right?"

"I'd noticed," she said with a humourless huff of laughter. "But... that is politics. Here, in Haven, are the Left and Right hands of Divine Justinia. They're executing her will, even if the other clerics disapprove. And when the Temple went up, your forces were out there, ready to rescue those few of us still alive."

"So, the Inquisition's actually doing something to fix it, and you think the revered mothers are probably just doing politics."

"That," agreed Lysette.

"And the templars are...?"

She shook her head. "Even I, who was one of them, know not what. The reports I have heard following the explosion are isolated, piecemeal and... odd. But it's not just that." Her pensive gaze cleared and she levelled me with an intent stare. "The Inquisition saved me, Herald. I was committed to serving. I still am. My life is a debt I intend to repay however I can."

I looked at her for a few seconds. "Okay. You do whatever you feel like you have to."

She smiled, a tiny curve of her mouth. "You're a strange man, Herald."

"Call me Adaar," I said, getting up with a groan. I should have stretched, and I should not have sat like a fool in the freezing fucking snow while my muscles were cooling. Idiot.

"You're a strange man, Adaar."

I snorted softly. _Right._ "Thanks for this, Lysette."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was meant to be in Val Royeaux this chapter and I never even left Haven because I decided to ramble on instead of cutting scenes. (Reasons behind not cutting scenes like a responsible writer: This whole story's basically an excuse for self-indulgent worldbuilding shenanigans that are easier to write when you're a "newcomer" to the setting. And anyway, I like Lysette, she's a bit cute. (For the people who are reading this and haven't played -- she's a canon character, but very minor.))
> 
> I have half the next chapter written, so we can hope it won't be too long. Otherwise, you know what I'm going to say! If you liked something about this chapter, please let me know what it was. :)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally get to Val Royeaux?? I know I'm surprised too.

In the few days before we set out for Val Royeaux, I got a lot of time in with Lysette. She was hard but fair, and it seemed like she expected at least as much from herself as she did from me or anyone. I wasn't sure I liked her, exactly: she was serious and sober and there wasn't much room to laugh at herself (or me, actually) in her character, but she was a decent sort of person.

The progressions she showed me were things I was meant to practice as often as possible, until the strikes and movements turned into muscle memory - so when I started one movement, it finished without my conscious thought and my body was ready for the weight and speed and flex of it all on its own. It sounded good in theory, but in practice it meant long periods of technical, mind-numbing activity.

It was hard and it was boring.

"If it was easy and interesting, everybody would be good at it," Lysette pointed out more than once, but as long as I was putting in a serious effort she was willing to ignore it when I complained.

Lysette wasn't coming with us to Val Royeaux, but when she told me to practice she had this look in her eye. I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever else happened, she'd _know_ if I hadn't followed her orders to the letter.

Even if I was willing to rebel against her and slack off, guilt alone would probably have compelled me.

The trip from the Frostbacks to Val Royeaux was long, although not as long as I'd expected. We took it on horseback, which helped, and then we spent most of it on the imperial highway and made good time. Cassandra and I still weren't seeing eye to eye, and there was no way in hell I'd apologise this time - I just wasn't wrong, and if I bowed to her interpretation of events now, I'd just be reinforcing her behaviour.

Still, it did take us a couple of weeks. When we made camp for the evenings, I tried to get first or last watch and put in an effort to go through the exercises and progressions Lysette had insisted upon during that time. It was an easy way to keep myself awake (foul campfire coffee aside), and I could take a break to walk the perimeter of our camp a couple times in the middle.

I was glad that Cassandra made no effort to be in the sightline of my practising, because I was sure she would have valid and valuable insights - and that, in turn, wasn't something I was prepared to accept from her right then. In fact, the only time anybody actually commented it was Solas.

"You may wish to attain a level of proficiency with a lighter sword, Adaar," he said once, having gotten up for the day while I was finishing the last of the exercises I had to get through.

"Mm?" I grunted.

"You are a mage. When you learn, you will need one hand free to cast," he said.

I laughed, and because I'd been working hard, it came out a little breathless. "I don't think I'm ever going to be that good at magic, Solas."

How could I be, when I couldn't even draw energy from the Fade properly? The only time I'd been able to do even the smallest piece of spellwork, I'd had to bleed for it. Blood magic might have been helpful in a pinch, but it could also get me killed by my own allies. It seemed not only safer but genuinely more effective just to stick to learning how to kill people by sticking swords into them.

His lips thinned. "You cannot know that. With application, you may surprise us both."

That seemed unlikely, but that also marked the end of riding simply to travel. Now when we mounted up and moved out along the imperial highway again, Solas drew his palfrey in beside my forder.

I could hardly do any magic in the practical sense, especially not with Cassandra right there, but he seemed determined to fill my head with it anyway. Solas's 'lessons' meandered from intensely technical explanations to stories of his own dreaming in the Fade. I wondered how old some of those stories were, and what he'd removed or fabricated to have them make sense to his listeners.

I would have expected Cassandra to be the closest of those listeners, given that she was part of an order tasked with overseeing mages in southern Thedas, but it was actually Varric who seemed absurdly interested. It took me miles and miles of road to realise why. Varric, of course, didn't dream - dwarves didn't dream. All this open discussion of the Fade that Solas was doing must have seemed pretty novel from that standpoint.

"This shit is so weird," he said at one point, shaking his head, fascinated. Solas was very fond of the sound of his own voice and being a teacher came sort of naturally to him, but he couldn't talk the whole time.

"So when you sleep," I said curiously, "you just... nothing? For hours?" That was actually weirder than dreaming to me.

"Well, yeah."

I shook my head. The Fade, yeah, _that_ was a bizarre concept. But instead of his brain riffling through things he'd seen or done and mixing up all the details while it processed them, Varric's sleep was just... blank.

"So... is it different to being knocked out?"

"Eh." He made a wavering gesture with one hand. He didn't drop the reins, and his pony's ear twitched when the odd movement pulled gently at its mouth. "Fewer headaches."

"Huh."

"That seems strange," said Cassandra, peering over her shoulder. She probably should have been our rear guard, but she was also the only human member of our little group. The imperial highway was policed by chevaliers, so it was better that she be the first to meet them when we came across patrols.

"Seeker, to me, you're all strange," Varric pointed out.

Her expression soured, but whether it was at being addressed by Varric at all or because she didn't like being thought of as 'strange' was hard to say.

"That dwarves cannot dream is a mystery that has confounded scholars from every walk of life for millennia," Solas mused quietly. "I have seen so much of this world through dreams, but dwarves exist there only as memories seen through the eyes of others, vague and fragmented. I have learnt very little of them as a people."

To me, it seemed like the Fade was basically quantum theory, but graphically illustrated and on premium crack cocaine. Plus spirits. "So... the unobserved dwarf doesn't exist?" I said, smiling to myself.

Solas raised his eyebrows. "In the Fade, perhaps."

Magical theory wasn't exactly intuitive, but it was intensely academic and as long as you understood each basic principle as it was introduced it was simple enough to keep up with the others. Solas was a patient teacher - more patient with the theory than he had been with the practice. I thought maybe his patience was directly relative to how quickly I picked up on the subject matter. I was abysmal at actually performing magic, but lore about the Fade and the technical stuff were pretty easy to get on with.

"You catch on quickly, Adaar," he murmured in the evening. From his expression, Solas seemed surprised at how quickly I caught on. The concepts weren't that hard, so his surprise was not the least bit flattering. Not to suggest that Solas was under the impression that I was stupid, but...

Actually, no, that was exactly what I was thinking. He obviously thought I wasn't very clever, and was surprised to find out that I was actually of average intelligence. I supposed I wasn't an elf, which was always a terrible flaw to Solas. I had giant horns like an animal and I knew nothing about the things he found particularly valuable. Add to this that I was brand new to Thedas, so there was probably a lot I'd done to make him think I was stupid... Well.

I wasn't sure what I'd tell him if I answered, so I said "Hmm," and didn't open my mouth.

The days on the road were mostly long hours of listening to Solas or Varric talk. Both of them loved the sounds of their own voices, and Cassandra was a relatively quiet companion. I did the progressions Lysette had set in the evenings or during my watch.

We passed by the slower-moving caravans and carts rolling along the highway. Varric seemed a little concerned by how few of them there were, despite the easy travelling for traders in summer.

"The Breach is bad for business," he said, giving the sky a disgusted glance. "I'm not sure I'd want to travel when the forecast is for 'green with a chance of demons', either."

"Yet here you are," Solas murmured.

"Here I am," Varric agreed sourly.

We were doing what we could to help. I was pretty sure closing the rifts we found along the imperial highway would be a big help for trade in the area. On the other hand, there was also the civil war to consider. Supply lines were important to any war effort, I knew, and only merchants who could afford a fair degree of armed protection for their slow-moving caravans would really be able to sell their wares across Orlais.

Val Royeaux, being a nexus of power and a place where the aristocracy gathered, would be less affected by the civil war, but I didn't like considering what might be happening to the smaller towns with less noble investment. He countryside looked fine from here: hilly with hard dirt and big trees, filled with dark-skinned nugs and high-strung, fleet-footed animals that I placed in a sort of caprine category in my head. Here and there we saw the outline of ragged canines on the horizon, but thankfully none of them was hungry enough or silly enough to get too close. I had nothing against wolves in theory, but the demon-possessed ones in the Hinterlands had made me a lot warier of them.

Our journey wasn't completely quiet, because we certainly did come across a couple of rifts on or around the imperial highway. I sure didn't remember that from the game, but it made sense that they weren't just concentrated in the places where the game had shown maps.

"Hold," said Cassandra imperiously as soon as we caught that first telltale flicker of crackling green up ahead.

There were several chevaliers at the location, all gleaming in their battered steel and with pennons snapping proudly in the breeze. Just off the highway they'd set up a makeshift garrison of tents and equipment - some of it was a bit patchwork, a little slap-dash, but all up it seemed pretty regimented and organised. At a glance, it looked to me as though these guys had been diverted from the war effort to babysit the rift and safeguard travellers from demons if they could - which was a good decision, all up, since the highway was a pretty important trade route. I wondered if it had come from the capital or if there was at least one captain somewhere in the army with his head screwed on straight.

They seemed to be killing demons as they came through, then escorting any travellers across the danger zone while the rift was quiescent. The tents were, presumably, where reinforcements were kept. It looked... effective, but strained. I didn't for a second think it was sustainable.

"We should close it," Cassandra announced.

I waited for my stomach to clench and my temper to go from tepid to simmering, just as it had every time she'd opened her mouth in the last few days - but the annoyance I felt was more of a gentle wash than a seething rush.

She was right, and I was kind of looking forward to being on her side for a change.

See, even though I felt like cooperating with Cassandra was admitting she was right in a teeth-grinding, eye-twitching sort of way about the way she'd treated me regarding the whole 'herald of Andraste' business - well. There was nothing like a huge demon-spewing hole in reality to make me remember that she wasn't the enemy.

I'd discovered that all sorts of differences of opinion could be shunted to one side in the face of a terror demon or two.

"It doesn't look like a big one," I said hopefully, even as I threw one leg over the forder's saddle and dismounted. Fighting from horseback seemed cool, but it required both riding skill and expertise that I didn't have. As far as I could tell, nobody else really had it either. Maybe Cassandra, but she was obviously more comfortable on foot. We'd have to talk to the chevaliers keeping the perimeter about it.

My knees were only a little wobbly from all that time in the saddle now. I was getting used to travelling like this. I led the forder with a short rein, but he didn't seem too stressed - wary of the light show and the sounds and smells, but not actually upset as long as I was reasonably calm. Dennet did good work.

The others also dismounted, but in general we wanted Cassandra to approach first. Varric, despite his charm, hardly ever inspired confidence in military types. Solas and I were right out, strange dangerous creatures that we were.

"It does not. But it only takes one demon to kill you. Be on your guard." How cheery. Thanks, Cassandra.

"Halt, travellers," called one of the perimeter chevaliers as we approached. There was another with him. Both were big men, even bigger in their huge suits of armour, although I was still much taller. I'd never get used to towering over everyone.

The chevaliers wore helms with faceplates like masks in the Orlesian fashion, although there was a rend in the smooth metal over one's cheekbone. Its jagged edges were smudged with blood and soot. "It's been about an hour since any demons came through, so we're expecting more soon. Once they've been put down it will be safe to cross."

"The Herald of Andraste can close the rifts," Cassandra declared in her clear, ringing voice.

"I'd heard that was so," said one of the chevaliers dubiously.

"Let us through," demanded Cassandra.

They shared a look, which had absolutely no chance of communicating anything much with their faceplates both up.

"If we're lying," I said helpfully, "then there's a good chance we'll just get eaten by demons and you can keep our stuff."

" _Herald_." Cassandra made a noise like something was stuck in her throat, but I noticed she didn't actually disagree.

One of the men gave a humourless snort. "As you say, Herald," he agreed, stepping aside.

I wasn't sure about handing my reins over to the chevaliers, but I also wasn't sure I trusted my horse's training to stop him from leaving. He was well-trained, but once his rider was gone and he was faced with a rift he'd probably hightail it in the opposite direction just like any other sensible prey animal.

I doubted the soldiers were going to make off with my horse. I handed over the reins. The horse's ears flicked nervously.

There was a hiss and a crackle from the rift ahead, a whine like struggling electronics. It was a familiar sound. We didn't talk any more, and instead all four of us broke into a run, loosening weapons and readying ourselves as we dashed for the rift ahead, where there was a lot of yelling and scraping and clattering suddenly going on.

By the time we got to the rift itself the chevaliers there were already engaging, and they didn't have time to question us before accepting our help.

A cool, gleaming shield washed down over us all. It was Solas's magic, quick and efficient as always. I was gaining a new appreciation for how much finesse he actually had, now that I was slowly learning about magic.

The first rush of demons were mostly wraiths. They were annoying, and dangerous over time - each time one of their sizzling projectiles hit, it did more than just hurt. It made my knees go weak and my fingers feel numb, buzzing under my skin and lingering for long seconds. Solas's shields helped prevent the pain and damage of the spells they fired, but they did nothing to stop that sense of weakness. We just had to grit our teeth, cling tighter to our weapons, and hew away at the little shits.

It seemed strange that they were even real enough to cut, but a heavy blow from my club put them down just like most anything else, and way easier than some. Sometimes it seemed like Cassandra could get rid of them just by glaring hard enough.

The last of them sprouted a crossbow bolt between its ghostly eyes and went still, a frozen shape lingering in the air like an afterimage. I could hear Varric cooing sweet nothings to Bianca somewhere behind us.

Once they were gone there was a lull as the rift pulsed, sending bright tendrils of the fade out to taste the air and tether to the ground. I could feel it thumping away in my hand, slower than my own rapid heart beat. It didn't hurt, exactly, but... it was an unnerving feeling.

The rhythm of these rifts didn't really change, I'd discovered. The first wave of demons was always followed by a second, with an oddly convenient pause to catch my breath while they manifested. I supposed it was bit like a doorway, and the spirits who were ripped through could not all come at once - hence, the waves.

I wasn't complaining. It gave me time to shake off the knee-weakening, spine-buzzing feeling of being hit by one of the wraiths' attacks.

"You should not be here," called one of the chevaliers, although her eyes were mostly on Cassandra's cuirass, where the symbol of the Inquisition shone in the greenish light of the rift.

"We can help," Cassandra returned. She barely even sounded out of breath. Then there were more demons and no time for commentary.

The fight was unpleasant, all straining muscle and clattering steel and the deafening cries of demons and the smell of burning atmosphere and rank armour - but the four of us had begun to fall into a rhythm with such things, honestly, and the demons that showed up at rifts like these were largely frightened and confused spirits yanked from the Fade and turned to violence. Between us and the chevaliers, there were no casualties and not even many injuries.

"Adaar!" Solas's voice cracked through the chilly air.

I shoved my hand toward the rift. The pulse of it shook my fingers, made my skin shiver and my teeth hurt. The rift's noises rose, higher and higher, whining and crackling in the air around us.

Green light flashed, burst across my skin and against my eyelids, and the shock made me jerk.

Then it was quiet. Somewhere, a horse stamped and its shoe struck loudly against he road.

"It's closed," murmured one of the chevaliers.

s

This murmur rushed through them, moving from one to another in relief and awe. Their gazes, locked behind blank faceplates, all shifted eventually toward me.

I... was too big to hide behind any of my companions. I was pretty sure I should say something, but I had nothing to say. 'Please go away,' was not very polite, but it was how I felt.

"Another rift closed," Cassandra said, satisfied.

The chevalier with the damaged helm who had met us at the perimeter arrived leading a train of horses, some better behaved than others. I was happy to see the bulk of my big forder again because it meant I had something to hide behind.

It took Cassandra just on fifteen minutes to finish up with the chevaliers, even when I focused on checking my horse's hooves - like demons somehow forced horses to pick up rocks, right? - and avoided engaging with any of them.

Cassandra was abrupt as hell, but it turned out almost every member of the Orlesian military knew _of_ her, even if they'd never met. To them she was, as far as I could tell from the introductions, an exotic princess who killed dragons. Even steel-masked military men and women like these chevaliers and their retainers were all aflutter at meeting her.

At best, I thought Cassandra found this annoying.

"You could have helped," she said when we were on the road again.

"You had it under control, Seeker," Varric said, in a tone that I could only assume really meant _and miss that? shit, no_.

There were only a couple more rifts on the road - or near it, anyway - and we made a point of closing them, casually announcing that the Inquisition had come to fix the problem. We weren't necessarily any better at fighting the demons that fell through the rifts than any of the soldiers we ran into (well, I wasn't; Cassandra, Solas and Varric probably were), but we could end the problem once the demons were cleared out. We occasionally even left impromptu celebrations in our wake as we moved.

One chevalier gave me a flask of what Varric identified for me by nose as slightly stale Butterbile. Presumably this skill came from living in an actual tavern for years and years. "Couldn't tell you what year," he admitted. "...save it, though. After this shit, we're going to need it."

I snorted softly. It was probably an understatement. However much I disliked the journey, I _really_ didn't like the idea of actually arriving in Val Royeaux. The thought alone filled me with gut-twisting anxiety.

We probably made greater inroads into Orlais on the journey than we would once we reached the capital, because there were plenty of wild-eyed soldiers and officers who now knew we weren't talking shit: we really _could_ close the holes in reality. I saw no few of them look from me to the Breach and back with an expression of slowly dawning relief, as though they'd been telling themselves it'd be okay but they hadn't really believed it until then. Understandable though that was, it was still a very uncomfortable feeling to be viewed that way. 

When we finally got there, I realised that Val Royeaux was huge. The parts we were going to actually see were hardly all of the city, but even so, the impression of size was much greater when you were staring up at the pale marble and high, pointed archways. This part of the city seemed like it was clothed in blue and white for summer, decorated with gilt statuary and climbing green vines.

"Just a guess Seeker, but I think they know who we are," mused Varric as we headed through the iron gates to the city proper. There were huge ceramic pots on either side, showing off the yellowing leaves of carefully maintained little trees.

With perfect timing to his comment, a dolled-up, masked lady gasped and backed away from us like we might physically assault her in the street. Yeah, they knew who we were.

"Your powers of observation never fail to impress me, Varric," drawled Cassandra, full of spite and sharp sarcasm. I shifted uncomfortably. This wasn't going to end well.

A scout was waiting to meet us, face flushed and slightly out of breath. She wore one of the ugly mint-green hoods of the inquisition, light leather armour - it blended in out in the countryside, but here she stuck out like a lily in a rosebush. "The Chantry mothers await you, but so do a great many templars," she said, almost as soon as we were within earshot.

"Templars? I thought they'd broken off from the Chantry?"

"People seem to think the templars will protect them from the Inquisition. They're gathering on the other side of the market - I think that's where they intend to meet you."

"Return to Haven," ordered Cassandra. "Someone will need to inform them if we are... delayed."

"You mean arrested," I muttered.

"No." Her voice was flat. "I mean delayed. They may delay us, but they cannot _arrest_ us. I do not recognise their authority to do so."

I wondered if that would actually work for Cassandra. Typically, I'd have said no way in hell, because strangers with shining armour and sharp weaponry were pretty good at enforcing their authority in my experience. You didn't have to recognise it to get cut down, after all; that was how policing worked. But Cassandra might have been able to refuse them through sheer pigheaded force of will. Seemed legit.

I rubbed my forehead, digging my nails in along the raised edge of one horn where I could feel it beneath the skin there. Hm, my skin was dry.

"Yeeaah, okay, but... hear me out here: state sovereignty is founded on the, uh, the socially legitimated use of violence to maintain control. The Chantry works pretty similarly to a nation, considering the concessions they receive in every Andrastian country. It's the same idea. The authority of the chantry is in their strength of arms, sure, but it's also due to how people think they're a legitimate authority and thereby invest them with that power. The strength of our belief that they're completely full of shit on this one doesn't matter as much as that does."

" _Socially legitimated use of violence_ ," repeated Varric, like he wasn't sure if he should be appalled or delighted. "I've got to write that down. Nobody'll believe the shit you come out with."

"You may wish to avoid using multisyllabic words when you speak to the revered mothers," said Solas mildly. I was seriously beginning to hate how often I agreed with him and his stupid cynical know-it-all face, because he was just as condescending to me. I smiled anyway, helplessly. "It has been some time since new thought has occurred to them."

Cassandra shot him a fierce look.

"I'm not sure that's true." I couldn't help myself. "I think some of them discovered fire last w-"

" _Enough_ ," snapped Cassandra.

I subsided, feeling only a little guilty. Varric caught my eye and raised his eyebrows at me. I looked away.

That was basically the last of my good humour, unfortunately. I looked around at the summer bazaar and felt abruptly very tired. The place was pretty, in a constructed sort of way: huge, red swathes of fabric streamed overhead, snapping in the breeze, and further above birds swooped and played in the clear air. In the middle of the bazaar was a pavilion guarded by gilt lions with red tassels hanging from their chins. They were set between trimmed green hedges and hunched protectively over a latticed waterway.

It was... pretentious, basically. Everything here was. Half the people were wearing masks, dressed to the nines and blank-faced behind them. Frankly they were pretty fucking creepy.

"The Inquisition?" mused one masked minor nobleman as we walked past. "Hmph. We don't require that sort of thing in Val Royeaux."

What on earth was 'that sort of thing' meant to mean? That he didn't require somebody to close rifts for him? Maybe we should just feed this ungrateful fucker to the demons, then. I ground my teeth and tried not to think of all the rifts I'd risked my neck for recently. 

Then I had a lightning flash of what was either spite or inspiration - or both, delicately balanced. I leaned closer. "Your shoes are out of season, ser," I told him in the mildest voice I could manage.

He scoffed and sneered, but when we left him I could see he was contemplating his feet with uncertainty. Fucking _score_.

I felt better for about three seconds but in the end it didn't make much difference: we walked through the bazaar and everybody who recognised us as Inquisition had something to say. A chevalier declared that the templars would 'deal with' us, another nobleman spat at us. Masks turned everywhere, staring at us with shadowed eye sockets.

"You may as well keep walking," hissed one shopkeeper, staring at Solas like he'd murdered the man's own firstborn. "I won't deal with _heretics_."

He wasn't looking at Cassandra or Varric or even me with that degree of vitriol, though.

"It's either the ears, or the staff," muttered Varric in a low voice. "Being part of the Inquisition's just a bonus."

"Why not both?" Solas wondered mildly.

Yeah, why not? I fucking hated Val Royeaux and we hadn't even been here for twenty minutes.

I glanced at seller's wares: wooden chairs painted white with embroidered upholstery and spindly claw-footed legs, a couple of aged books, knick-knacks and curiosities. Encouraged by his completely irrelevant inventory, I edged between Solas and the shops just so I could stare pointedly and openly at the seller. Hey, if I was going to be a giant horned monster of looming muscle I might as well use it to stare down at people until they felt incredibly uncomfortable.

"Too depressing," Varric said, having taken a moment to contemplate Solas's question.

"Ah," said Solas. "Yes, that is an aspect I had not considered," he murmured. One eyebrow quirked up, giving his face a bemused cast for a moment. "Depression."

Varric made a bleakly amused noise.

In his own way, Solas was just as pissed off and on-edge as I was. Neither Varric nor Cassandra seemed stressed by the crowds or the city itself, but they were obviously not looking forward to the confrontation we all knew had to happen. Further in, the Chantry mothers would be waiting for us. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there was something specific you liked, let me know! If not, catchu next chapter. :)


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of people say a lot of things. Our hero is a poor public speaker. Varric STILL hasn't figured out a new nickname. Cassandra has at least two feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you read this and feel that this chapter is a mess, man do i agree.

There was a crowd already gathered on the far side of the bazaar. It was much larger than I'd expected. Everything in the city was. The people milling there were dressed in a mix of ragged homespun, gleaming armour, liveries, summerweight muslins and silks and those flowing white Chantry dresses that made people look like human-sized tube socks. Everybody was willing to rub shoulders to watch us bicker, I guessed.

For a place as obviously separated by class as Val Royeaux was... "Amazing how the end of the world brings people together," I muttered sourly.

Oh, man. This was going to be _humiliating_.

"That is Mother Hevara," said Cassandra quietly as we approached. "One of the people Mother Giselle spoke of. She is... sincere in her faith, at least."

Cassandra was probably the only person here who thought that was a good indicator of character. I sighed.

Being sincere didn't mean she was even a little bit sympathetic, which became very obvious as we approached. People in the crowd stumbled all over themselves trying to get out of our way - or, rather, _my_ way. I doubted some of them had ever seen a big horned dude like me before. It wasn't like I'd seen any other vashoth here in the marketplace.

Since she had all this warning of our approach, Mother Hevara had the opportunity for a dramatic opening. She straightened her spine, stood tall on her hastily-constructed wooden dias, took that opportunity in both hands and ran with it: "Good people of Val Royeaux," she cried, flinging her arms out, "hear me!"

She commenced with a declaration of mourning for Divine Justinia, which was an excellent move on her behalf - it was pious, it was evocative, it spoke to a common grief shared by anybody in the crowd who'd recently lost a loved one to the Breach or the mage rebellion or the civil war... and I couldn't possibly interrupt it without seeming completely callous. (And, well. There was also the slim but nagging possibility that interrupting her speech about Justinia's 'naive and beautiful heart' might have been risking Cassandra turning and taking my head off in an offended snit. Cassandra was _scary_.)

By the time Hevara was finished with her commentary on 'mourning' Justinia, she'd built up enough steam that people in the crowd were listening properly again, and she segued neatly from Justinia's death into denouncing me as her murderer, a 'wicked Qunari' usurper trying to 'rise where she fell'.

She finished with a rousing declaration that I was a false prophet, sent to tempt them all in their hour of need.

Hevara hadn't said anything of substance, but I had to give her some credit for rhetoric. It was, psychologically, a well-composed speech. I supposed that was what priests spent a lot of time doing, talking to people and trying to convince them of... well. Of nothing of substance.

I glanced around. Even though I towered over every one of the crowd, I was also standing on the ground while Hevara loomed on her raised dias. This had been set up well on her part. _Ugh._

Cassandra gave me dagger eyes. "Say something," she hissed when the silence went on and the crowd's murmuring rose in an anxious swell.

"Okay," I said slowly. I decided to gloss over the death of the Divine as a thing, because I didn't want to get dragged into an argument about killing their pope. You couldn't prove it either way, so that wasn't going to end well for me.

Okay. Public speaking. Sure. This was fine. I took a deep breath and tried to keep the tremors out of my voice. I reminded myself to speak slowly, instead of letting the words rush unintelligibly together. _Deep breath. From the belly. Mouth opened properly, no mumbling. Come on._

"So... Okay, I'm sure by now you've noticed that there's a big hole in the sky," I said, shifting uncomfortably on my feet. Somewhere in the crowd somebody yelled 'whose fault is that, murdering bastard?' Yeah, this was not a supportive crowd. "So, we have a plan to close it. That's what we're here for. And... we think the Chantry should be supporting that plan, because we haven't seen anyone else with a better one yet."

I stopped because I was basically done, but everyone seemed to be waiting for something more.

"And they're the Chantry, so I figure they're supposed to give a fuck about whether or not thousands of people die because the sky's vomiting demons," I clarified.

I felt more than saw or heard Solas shift on his bare toes behind me.

"Maker," muttered Varric. "I knew this was going to be a bad idea, but I thought it'd be funnier."

Cassandra's expression was probably going to give me nightmares, but she clenched her jaw and whirled from me to face Hevara. "It's true!" she cried, and, shit, why didn't we just let her talk in the first place? She was better at sounding like she knew what she was doing, at the very least. "The Inquisition seeks only to end this madness before it is too late!"

"It is already too late!" Hevara said, and flung one arm out to point to where the templars were approaching from the side of the bazaar I hadn't seen yet. They clanked as they approached, all in uniform, all gleaming with the summer sun flaming on their armour.

Hevara quickly declared that the templars would save the people from the Inquisition, which - that was so stupid, because of course defeating _us_ wasn't going to stop the Breach, but from the surprised and relieved murmuring around us I guessed people just felt threatened by _something_ and found the presence of the templars comforting in that regard.

As much as I definitely didn't want to fight a group of templars that outnumbered us so severely, I also had never been so pleased to see a group of heavily armed soldiers who hated me before. At least now, with their burnished armour and stamping feet distracting the crowd, I wouldn't be expected to convince anybody of anything.

Not least because -

Yeah.

One of the templars hauled back and punched Mother Hevara in the head. She gave a surprised grunt and hit the deck like a sack of rocks.

"Uh," said Varric.

"Lord Seeker Lucius?" Cassandra mouthed incredulously. Her eyes licked from the Lord Seeker to Hevara, and then, confused but direct as always, she darted forward. "Lord Seeker Lucius," she called, shouldering past two masked noblemen, one of whom stumbled back and steadied himself only with the help of a nearby chevalier.

I didn't hear what he said to her, but she stopped moving. Her face went pale, paler than usual. I was close enough to see her fists clench at her sides and her shoulders rise defensively.

A strange, vulnerable expression flashed across Cassandra's face.

I... I felt it like a punch in the gut. There was something horrible about seeing Cassandra wrong-footed like this. She was so - she was indomitable, constant, certain.

Watching this shit turned my stomach. I flexed my fingers, but my muscles were already tense enough that I could feel the fine trembling in them.

Cassandra pointed north, always, straight and magnetic, and sometimes I admired her and sometimes I hated her but frankly _how fucking dare anyone make her face do that_.

I didn't realise I'd stomped forward until Varric caught me.

"You can't kill him," he hissed at my side, hooking one hand around my elbow. I felt it, of course, but if I'd really wanted to free myself Varric didn't have the strength or leverage to stop me from moving.

It was more what he'd said that made me falter. "What? Christ, I'm not going to _kill_ him."

Yell at him, maybe. There were a lot of rude things I could think of to say to him, all of which would be an inappropriate but very welcome outlet for my own fraying temper. I'd distract Cassandra by blundering in like a clumsy asshole, definitely.

Except... well, how likely was that to end in anything but bloodshed? Even if I could count on him to be human right now, we were both carrying weapons and surrounded by armed soldiers. The situation was already volatile, and... I thought about it, and I could very easily see myself going for my club.

Well. Killing had been our chosen method of solving problems, hadn't it? He wouldn't be the first deluded templar I'd killed recently.

I chewed my bottom lip. No. Nah. "Don't be ridiculous," I muttered, settling my weight back on my heels. I could still feel the shake in my hands. Varric probably didn't trust me much either, since he didn't let go.

"Have you seen your face? Because you _look_ like you're going to kill him."

"It would be poor timing," said Solas, but he said it that calculating way that made me think that was really his only objection.

I swallowed. "I'm not going to kill him." I wasn't about to try to explain that I just really didn't like the way he'd spoken to Cassandra - or, more accurately, the way she'd responded to it. I could picture exactly how Varric would raise his eyebrows to that.

A second later it hardly mattered, because Lucius was whirling on us, voice raised and eyes flashing in his pale and freckled face.

He had a certain presence to him, more than Mother Hevara or I or even Cassandra - although I wasn't sure if it even _was_ him. He might have been going nuts on his own, but the envy demon probably helped, and it was hard to say when it had taken over for him completely.

"You should all be ashamed!" he roared, and the crowd went still and silent.

Lord Seeker Lucius looked like somebody you should listen to, surrounded by his obedient soldiers and dressed all in gleaming silvery armour with his voice ringing throughout the bazaar.

He went on about the wrongs done to the templar order by the Chantry for some time, aggressively denounced the Inquisition, and then, when it seemed like his speech was going quite well, he grew... strange.

Really strange.

He began screaming about respecting his destiny. Several of the crowd made uncertain noises at that. One of the templars behind him, too, broke form and resettled his weight upon his feet, looking like he wanted to be pretty much anywhere else.

I finally moved forward again and drew up with Cassandra, who was rapidly recovering from her nasty shock. Her expression was cycling through hurt and confusion and warming up to a sort of angry bafflement.

The flush on her face made the scar across her cheek stand out white.

"Did he seriously come here just to punch out a priest and have a whinge?"

Cassandra clenched her jaw, glanced at me and didn't respond.

Lucius did, though. "I came to see what frightens old women so, and laugh!"

I opened my mouth, but it was like there were so many things wrong with this situation I didn't have the space in my throat for all of them to come out at once, so I just stared in silence while they jockeyed for position on my tongue. _Why is that a good reason to travel here?_ was a good start. But also: _So why aren't you laughing? Why are you so mad then?_ and, _Why are you not concerned about the Breach?_ and then, a little alarmed, _a demon would be flying further below the radar right now, surely_ and, lastly, the thought that Lord Seeker Lucius might actually be coming apart at the seams from sheer stress.

He stared at me while I stared right back, lost for words.

Then he turned, addressing his own followers. "Val Royeaux is unworthy of our protection!" he bellowed, voice cracking across the bazaar, which had grown silent in witness to his mad performance. "We march!"

And then the whole column of warriors all hulking in their leather and steel turned and followed him out of the bazaar, clank-clank-clanking in time to their measured steps.

We watched in silence until they were gone and then the spell seemed to be broken. A Chantry scholar raced to Mother Hevara's side, dropping to his knees on the wooden platform beside her.

I turned back to Cassandra. "I..." I didn't say anything.

She looked as baffled as I felt.

"...Charming fellow," drawled Varric, and that seemed to help because Cassandra squared her shoulders and shot him a poisonous look.

"He was not like that before. I do not understand. Lord Seeker Lucius was always a decent man..." her eyes remained on the gates where the templars had gone. "Has he gone mad?"

"He is a templar," said Solas mildly, as though this pretty much implied a degree of madness. Solas, unperturbed by how quickly Cassandra's scowl turned upon him, leaned on his staff and returned her a look of polite inquiry.

You know, I came into this assuming Varric was the shit-stirrer, but Solas was _at least_ as bad, most of the time.

I knocked my arm against Cassandra's shoulder quietly, both in a show of support and to get her attention. She looked sideways at me. It wasn't a happy look, but I could hardly blame her. It hadn't been a happy day, all up.

" _Something_ was obviously wrong," I said, raising my hand to tick off points against my fingers. There was a lot I could point to in his manner and behaviour that showed something was off, at least. "He looked put together, and he spoke confidently, but honestly that speech was pretty muddled and confused on a bunch of different points. Like, if you take it at face value, he didn't really know why he was here - but he wouldn't have shown up if he hadn't thought he had something to say, obviously. The only constant he really got across was that he feels like he's better than other people and it's upsetting that they're not recognising it, which is... you said he was a decent kind of guy, so I'll take your word on that."

Cassandra's mouth twisted at that. "That is... not usual behaviour for him," she said, a little defensively.

"Right. And all of that 'the Chantry is unworthy' and 'Val Royeaux is unworthy' stuff, like every person in the city is somehow beneath him, that's... a bit nuts, too."

"That sort of talk is never a good sign," Varric said, squinting in the direction the Lord Seeker had taken. I assumed he spoke in the voice of experience. Varric was from Kirkwall, so he'd probably seen a lot of nervous breakdowns and demonic possessions, even excluding his years spent following Hawke around.

"And then that stuff about his destiny demanding respect? He sounded... a bit crazy. Not hyperbolically crazy. Actually crazy," I added for clarification. I wasn't sure if 'mentally ill' or 'stress-related breakdown' were descriptions that would mean anything to Cassandra. At least 'crazy' made sense. If this was the man before the envy demon, then he was losing it; if it was him after... then frankly the envy demon was probably losing it!

Cassandra gave me one of those annoyed looks and made a disgusted noise. "And why couldn't you speak like this when everyone was listening?"

Because everyone was listening, obviously. I didn't say it. She probably already knew.

"Excuse me," said a soft voice. "Inquisition?"

We all looked over, because apparently all of us now answered to 'Inquisition'. A merchant in a ruffled dress and a pale mask peered back at us from her stall. I glanced over what she was selling. There was corn, squash and pumpkin, lemons, apples and three slightly underripe tomatoes perched on a table like a puzzling little prize, still trailing pats of their vine. Beneath that, crates of oranges, wheels of cheese, sacks of dirty potatoes and chestnuts in a barrel.

"I'd like to help." The merchant tiled her mask slightly, until I could see very dark skin and a hesitant smile curling at the edges of her mouth.

I looked to Cassandra for confirmation.

"I do not think she was asking me," Cassandra drawled.

"Well, he is-"

"The Herald of Andraste. Yes," she sighed. It was a for-better-or-for-worse sort of sigh, and I felt a brief stab of irritation. If she and Leliana hadn't been so gung-ho about pushing this Herald bullshit then she wouldn't be having this conversation.

Her set jaw and resigned expression said she'd already considered that.

In the end I thought all of us were pretty pleased to have made contact with Belle. Sweet-tempered merchants who had existing suppliers of, and this was important, _non-nug sources of food,_ were very important to the Inquisition right now.

"Thanks," I said, because she seemed to expect me to say something else, instead of just 'yeah, sure'. "We'll see you at Haven."

Her mask back in place, Belle bowed her head, and I couldn't tell at all if she was pleased or not anymore. I thought she probably was, though.

"I don't think there's any point in going to the templars," I said, because frankly I didn't want them, "and I don't want to try to bargain with him."

"I would not discount him so easily," Cassandra said.

I gave her an incredulous look.

She clenched her jaw again. "All right," she said softly.

It was almost physically painful to see her struggling with this. Unless you counted the Breach or the mark on my hand, which I did not, Cassandra was the most certain and constant thing in my life right now. Seeing her falter made me uncomfortable from my heels to my horns.

But then there was a whistle, a crack, and then - "An arrow!"

"An arrow with a _message_ ," said Varric, sounding delighted. Of course he was delighted: it was the kind of harlequin-level plot mechanic he loved, after all.

I ducked forward to get it while the other three were still looking for the source.

I knew exactly what this would be, and honestly: _hell yes_.

Finding Sera's red stuff proved to be pretty straightforward, as far as puzzles went, although there was some argument about whether or not we really _needed_ to do it. Cassandra in particular seemed to feel that we'd be better off heading back to Haven to report to Leliana and Cullen and figure out the next steps.

My suggestion that she go on ahead with the remainder of Leliana's scouts while the three of us traipsed around out here in the city was not well-received, although I honestly wasn't sure why. She didn't _have_ to stay, we had the numbers to ensure relative safety if we needed to. Hell, between us, Varric, Solas and I even had a rogue, a mage and a (shitty) warrior - all bases covered. It was like she didn't trust us without supervision or something!

I didn't argue with Cassandra, though. If she was back to being her direct and impatient self, I for one was just relieved.

**Author's Note:**

> I _really_ have no excuse for this. If there's something you particularly liked, let me know in a comment.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Standing at the Edge of Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397956) by [limiculous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/limiculous/pseuds/limiculous)




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